Sometimes I come up with really good, insightful ideas but then I sit down to blog about it and realize I have no idea where to start. It makes sense in my head but I can't get it out right. What I wanted to write about was the concept of mastery.....I'll give it a shot, apologies if it ends up in a bunch of rambling.

The idea of a kung fu master that most people have (and I used to have) is so different from the reality. It's so much fantasy about mysterious, otherworldly people who've achieved super-natural powers or who are hard-core traditionalists passing down this pristine lineage of an art that hasn't changed in hundreds of years. The more educated you become on martial arts and the more teachers you meet, the more you get to know one, the more you realize how ridiculous this all is. Kung fu is a hodge-podge that people have been mixing around for literally thousands of years. Teachers/masters are people, just like anyone, with flaws and personality quirks, who have stuck with it. They are not always the most talented, the kindest, or the smartest. I often feel frustrated with Shifu, he leaves me floundering a lot of the time and I wish he'd spend more time teaching us and less time irritating us but the closer we get to the end of the program the clearer it is to me that having to figure things out for myself has been one of the most valuable things I've done here. If he was spoon-feeding me everything, I'd be totally lost upon returning home and realizing that I was on my own. Now I feel confident that I can figure most things out myself (maybe with occasional help) and become a master myself.

The grand-master (my teachers teacher) tells people that he was not a stand out student, many of his kung fu brothers were much better than him but they all left and he kept training and now he's the grand-master of Wudang. Every time I see him, I'm struck by what an amazing martial artist he is, and it's all because he never quit. When I'm feeling very unhappy about our training and contemplating why I'm still here, it comes down to one thing: I'm not a quitter. It can seem like a personality flaw at times, I wonder if I'm more stubborn than smart and if I'm not 'flogging a dead horse' but flaw or not, that's the way I am and really the only difference between me and some of the people who I've trained with in the past. I don't know if this is just the way I am or if it developed over all the years of training. I am not the fastest, the strongest, or even the cleverest, but I am still here and I hope I can end up like our grand-master in the end, being able to look back and be so glad that I stuck it out.

So I guess what I want to say is this, instead of glorifying those who have achieved mastery (in kung fu or in other pursuits), get your head out of the clouds and take a look at what it really took to get them where they are.

per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvi(ə)rəns/

noun

1. 1.

   steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.