Twice a week I am given an opportunity for reorientation. During those four hours I am no longer the expert, but a student wholly dependent on the willingness of others to share what they have learned. It is an essential component in my life.
As a licensed social worker with a specialization in mental health care, I appreciate the great importance of balance in optimal functioning. Any discipline which can assist us in understanding and achieving balance can only improve our quality of life. Aikido provides this guidance on both physical and mental levels.
The perception of mastery is like an intoxicant, and the person who imbibes in this belief acts much like we would expect of an inebriated person: mentally imbalanced and socially inappropriate. In their elevated phase, such a person may be loud, boorish, conceited, and dismissive. They are buoyed by an inflated sense of self, and their actions preserve and promote this disconnect with others—and with reality—by self-righteous, self-serving, self-centered behaviour.
I have observed that obsession with power and one’s own relative rank is frequently a trait of the insecure person. The swell of loudly-broadcast self-importance is countered by opposite swings of depression, also largely focused on the self: self-doubt and self-pity. This too is akin to intoxication. After the mania that comes from drugs and alcohol comes the sharp downward pitch into the depressive phase. Not only are the feelings of power and superiority absent, but there is a hollowness, a sense that one is even more empty and barren than was true before the whole process began.
Humility is the antidote to all of this. Why? And what does it really mean? Examine the word fully:
The term “humility” comes from the Latin word humilitas, a noun related to the adjective humilis, which may be translated as “humble”, but also as “grounded”, “from the earth”, or “low”, since it derives in turns from humus (earth).1
To be grounded in reality entails that one must recognize and accept one’s own self-worth while simultaneously recognizing and openly acknowledging the self-worth of others. Ultimately we are interdependent and achieve our greatest value to ourselves and others by achieving at the highest level, and assisting others to also do so. Practiced correctly, this produces an environment of ensured mutual prosperity, where each person both benefits and is a benefactor.
I have heard it said that Aikido has more than 10,000 nameable techniques. Even if that is an exaggeration, being partially true is still a wonder. It is undeniably true that Aikido is a gift to all humankind in that it is far too vast for any one person to ever master.
Even for dans of equal rank, are their “masteries” of the art equivalent? While they may certainly share a base level of competence, their individual strengths and relative weaknesses are unique. With time and experience, each has also developed a particular dialect from the vocabulary of 10,000, and this vocabulary and the ease with which they utilize it is never static. Two practitioners, even of equal rank, may be similar but are never the same. For that reason, each could continue to serve as both a teacher and a student to the other, which each dan’s growing expertise continuing to benefit the other.
It is no different for kyū-level aikidoka. From our earliest learning of the basic movements we immediately distinguish ourselves through our relative aptitudes.
Each visit to the dojo should be a reminder of this. We are what we are because of the people who helped us become more than we were. At a certain point we join the fortunate group who both function as students and instructors. And, if if we are wise, we never leave that group.
1 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humility
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