Do you remember the movie Karate Kid?
In it,
Mr.
Miyagi gives his student Daniel simple tasks to do.
Wax on,
Wax off,
Scrub the floor.
Like Daniel,
I remember thinking that was a silly way to train,
For how could mindless tasks prepare you for anything but a life of service,
Of cleaning up other people's messes?
Let's get to the fighting,
The flashy stuff,
Right?
Well,
In the other dojo,
Cobra Kai,
It's all about winning.
And it doesn't matter what damage you wreaked as you do it,
You fight dirty if you have to,
And you win.
Period.
But,
If you've seen the movie,
You know that those mindless,
Repeated tasks end up serving Daniel well.
He can block his enemies' attacks easily,
Almost effortlessly,
Because he has practiced those steady and strong moves that protect him.
He's done them so much,
His body and spirit know them by heart.
I'll admit,
I can be very competitive,
And so I recognize in myself that win-at-all-costs mentality,
The pushing,
The striving,
The punishing of self and maybe sometimes even the other.
I am not proud of this fact,
But we have to own up to our shadows,
Or our shadows own us.
Something else I know about myself is that I often thrash in what feels like the cage of the ordinary.
There has to be more than this,
Right?
While I'm no Mr.
Miyagi,
I am learning that the ordinary is where real life happens.
Where we become more and more real.
For it is in the ordinary where we can live intentionally,
Where we can practice living intentionally.
So we can ask,
How am I training myself?
Is it to react with fists up,
Or is it to trust your center and know you've got this?
What is constantly showing up for you?
Is it fear?
Is it courage,
Certainty,
Or curiosity?
What are the consequences of your daily choices,
Your daily practices?
Because trust me,
Even if you think you aren't practicing anything,
You are.
For every day we are practicing our daily choices,
Those ones we make again and again.
And do those practices set us up to be strong,
Or do they move us away from the kind of characters we want to be?
Which kind of master are you a student of?
And what is your deepest request inside?
The older I get,
The more I realize my deepest request is to live the ordinary the ordinary and be in love.
To be in love with what is.
To trust the quiet,
The simple.
And one way to trust the quiet and the simple is to breathe.
To take this very thing that becomes so ordinary,
We often forget about it,
But to take it and turn toward our breath.
Knowing it can be the very thing that saves us.
When life jumps out of the bushes and threatens to thrash us.
Breathe in and be awake and alive.
Breathe out and be centered and grounded.
Breathe in,
Be awake and alive.
Breathe out,
Trust your center and know that you are grounded.
Breathe,
And live.
Breathe,
And live.
Breathe,
And live light,
And shine.
