And so it begins...

Everything seems to be happening at once. UBBT starts on Jan 1, I move out on Jan 3, and my classes start on Jan 5. All three are terrifying me to no end.

I think my age is catching up with my outward appearance, and instead of being a child with an adult appearance I suddenly find myself in actual adulthood. The past 6 months have been overwhelming, with working full time, stumbling around the bureaucracy that is university application, and having to cope with painful health problems. Suddenly finding myself in the adult world has taken it's toll on my training, too. I think that I was too caught up in the unfamiliarity of it all and sort of shelled up when it came to my training. I am stepping out of my comfort zone into the responsibilities of adulthood, and the same can be said with starting UBBT 7.

Fear is what is preventing me from achieving many of my goals, including black belt. Instead of protecting myself from perceived harm, I must embrace everything that makes me uneasy. How else am I to grow from new experiences if I don't let myself have any? So I have decided: that if something scares me, then I should do it. It's not like I have anything to lose. Starting school, moving out, and the UBBT is a huge step outside of my comfort zone, but I am excited for the prospect of progressing as a person.

Karissa Martin

Silent River Kung Fu

Stony Plain, AB

www.silentriverkungfu.com

Nerdness

Being the crazy music nerd that I am, many songs stick out in my mind as being particularily worthy of deeper intellectual prodding. As a visual person, the songs that are placed in the"worthy of being recognized as somewhat original and honest" pile are usually ones that evoke strong mental images or feelings. Laces Out by USS is just that kinda of song, and besides being an incredibly rad dance tune, inspired many personal feelings. The lyrics repeat the phrase "it's absolute... we're absolute... I'm absolute..." I felt very strongly to that particular phrase, and like all cool people looked up the definition of absolute (not that I didn't know what it meant, but there's always weirdly awesome variations of a definition.)



absolute - perfect in quality or nature; complete



This spurred my thoughts into perfection and striving for perfection. David Dean once asked "practice makes perfect, and no-one's perfect, so why practice?," and this is the mindset of a large percentage of our population. Perfection is abstract; there is no solid idea of what makes the perfect person. A person has faults, and that's life, but if he just accepts his faults blindly on the basis that perfection is unattainable seems a little rediculous to me. On the contrairy, it should be the the motivator to strive for one's personal perfection. Maybe one won't become as super duper as one would like to in his lifetime, but that isn't an excuse not to try. That's just being mediocre, and who wants to live a mediocre life?

That being said, mastery occurs when one strives for absolute perfection. Whatever that perfection is to others, I don't know, but I have a good idea of what it is to me. In short, strive to be the best person one can.

Until next time... :)