This Side..Other Side

‘Oops wrong side’, I remarked. A Sensei retorted, ‘other side’. ‘There are no wrong sides. There is one side or the other side. The right or left.’ I shrugged and continued my practice. Time passed. I never expected to remember it until a week ago, teaching a class of students, karate. In fact I remembered it ten seconds too late. These young karate-kas were performing a ‘kata’ seven shades less than perfect. I expecting more, reacted ‘that is not correct’ and yelled a diatribe of the faults in their kata, while hastily demonstrating ‘this is not right...this is right’.

They meekly continued trying even harder, but their kata still devoid of that finer element. And it hit me. I had just reinforced what they were doing incorrectly rather than focusing and demonstrating only what should be done. I remembered the lesson of the ‘other side’ rather than the ‘wrong side’.

Action is a much better substitute to words. I broke down the movements and they followed. Once they knew how, what was wrong did not really matter. Negative reinforcements are too ubiquitous in our daily lives. At school, teachers focus on how many questions we got wrong. At work, as a software engineer, I read a daily report of the bug (error) count in software or design documents. We are quickly chastised for bad driving, but never commended for the good. Our lives are slowly revolving on not doing things wrong or incorrectly rather than aspiring to do better. Stop! Don’t fix the problems, fix ourselves. Before beginning a new task, homework, recipe in the kitchen don’t have an attitude that ‘well if its there’s not enough salt, I can add some later’ or ‘I can check if my answers are correct later and then correct it if needed’. Think about getting it right the first time. Plan, visualize and strategize the entire series of events that will happen after your first action, before you make your first move. And once you have gone past this stage, act. Don’t worry about how many questions are wrong, or if the foods too salty.

To me ‘kata’ should really be an acronym for ‘Keep Away Thoughts & Act’. It should transcend conscious thought. The only time to think is the beginning. When we act without thought, we act. An old samurai maxim, from the Chapter 1 of the Hagakure states “A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams”. Kata practice should be like so.

Too often in life we focus too much on what went wrong, rather than finding the solution. We focus on the ‘why’ or ‘how’ of things, further exacerbating it by asking ‘why me?’ Problems are not stumbling blocks but stepping stones. In the fear of tripping over them, we should not forget our way.