In class a couple of days ago one of my male players was joking around with one of my female players. It was all good natured and well meant as they have a good platonic relationship both on and off the mat.
He said something about her that caught my ear; "She's not a real woman. She's an Aikido player."
I thought about that for maybe one second before I began to discuss with them the actual depth behind that off-the-cuff (but very astute) remark and how Sarah Palin and my background in South Texas came into it.
When vigorously studied over a long period of time, Aikido rewires the inside of your head. The Sensei I studied and trained under for 20 some years was fond of stating that if people knew just how powerful Aikido truly is and just how radically it changes who you are (how you perceive yourself) and how you interact with others in all circumstances, that some folks would try to have it outlawed.
Consider this; you go to work everyday and are generally a mild-mannered employee/drone. Your boss is known for coming into offices and either speaking very sternly or in stressful meetings, raising his voice and yelling at people. He has done this successfully for so long that he knows no other way. He has come to think that domination is the best way to motivate people and since everyone needs their job, they knuckle under and say nothing and over time become the very things that they promised themselves in school that they would never become; their parents, desperate to keep their job and becoming an empty suit going no-where in a hurry.
You get a wild hair one day and sign up at a dojo and begin training in Aikido on a very faithful basis. You can't get enough mat time and you grow to love ukemi. Sensei talks incessantly about principles, fundamentals, looking your training partner in the eye without emotions being involved, only bring a positive attitude onto the mat, leaving your ego in your shoes and your shoes outside the door, controling breathing, posture, living a life in balance and harmony, etc.
You begin training in faster and faster attack scenarios and eventually get to multiple attacks and randori and weapons. Over time you build faith in your ability to engage in self-defense and multi-channel processing (being able to talk to someone on the sidelines while you deal with an attack, meaning that your Aikido is now intuitive and no longer needs your conscious attention). You can throw and talk and to those untrained civilians who do not know any better, it seems like you are two different people inhabiting the same body; one a fast moving Aikido/self-defense person and the other one a very relaxed and centered person having a conversation.
Now you go to work one day and the boss starts yelling at you. Your Aikido kicks in and you automatically center yourself, take a calm attitude and your breathing pattern changes. You might have a very brief stomach flutter as a tiny bit of adrenalin kicks in but after that, your face is as flat as the wall, your eyes are just watching the yelling fool in front of you and you no longer display the fear that your boss has become used to.
He's no longer getting the normal response and ....... it ....... scares him. He no longer knows how to deal with someone who isn't afraid of him. Your new-found internal strength allows you to step back as you never have before and to dispassionately evaluate your job, you career potential, your boss and his empty promises, your co-workers good and bad and everything about them, their actions, and the company statement. You are relaxed and you begin to notice things, attitudes, circumstances and on-the-job ethics that you have never seen before because you, until now, had been walking around in haze of fear, a fog, more concerned about survival than observing what has been going on around you.
This is how I made the life-changing decision to quit my career in commercial banking and become self-employed. After so many years in Aikido including filming projects and teaching seminars, I began to quit being afraid and started actually LISTENING to what was being said and WATCHING what everyone at the bank was doing to themselves, their co-workers and their subordinates. I began to not like it very much at all because I began to see the lack of focus, lack of ethics and honesty, the self-deceptions, barbaric career drive that destroyed so many relationships and marriages, the use of alcohol and drugs, and the use/abuse of anyone who could advance your career by you walking over their dead body.
When I worked in Asset Management and Liquidation for the RTC (Resolution Trust Corp.) during the S&L bailout 80 to 100 hour weeks were not uncommon. I worked next to attorneys who billed the government for 150 hour weeks at $500 an hour while only being on the job 10 to 4 every day (do the math yourself). I had to tolerate supervisors who had whiskey bottles in their offices and who went to "Men's Clubs" every day at lunch and then home to the wife at night.
My bosses got the corner offices and the big salaries while the rest of us "supported" their efforts. Worst of all though was walking into the boss' office and after asking how to advance our career, we were told to do exactly what they were doing; to wit, walk over the dead bodies of our co-workers and move up the corporate ladder.
I simply couldn't do it and could no longer look at myself in the mirror. My Budo ethics had finally taken control of my soul and there was no looking back. Aikido had finally given me the power to stand on my own, be my own man, act soft or hard as the circumstances warranted and work "with" people instead of "against" people. I laid an untimatum out to my first wife about our future only to find that I had grown and matured while she had not. I divorced her, changed jobs, re-married, positioned myself for a new career over a two year period, and did it. They had a buy-out and I was given the choice of moving up the corporate ladder and moving to San Francisco or taking the buy-out package. That decision was one of the easiest I've made. I made it so fast I spun the head off of the corporate "talking head" who made it.
After I left with a full years salary in my pocket and full benefits, I suddenly realized that I could never have done it without the strength Aikido gave me and the clarity of thought.
I finally understood my family and their hard attitudes way back when. After much Aikido you too can become the "steely-eyed cowboy" in all the movies and books, calmly watching the horizon for the dust from the approaching indians; you are now a "hard man or woman" because you no longer are intimidated by a yelling fool. After all, if you can deal with someone trying to take your head off at full speed and with multiple attackers, then this guy yelling his head off is just a big weinie.
Old style South Texas cattlemen were the same; a hard life just gives a calm attitude along with the spine to do what's necessary, IF (IF) you determine that something more than being watchfully quiet is required.
In our society, for all the protestations to the contrary, people are used to submissive women and fawning gutless men. We are taught to occupy these roles from childhood on being as the societal norm. A man who "stands-up" is denigrated as being a "cave-man" in this over-feminized society. The paradoxical thing though if you think about it long enough is that in a society that has become "over feminized" to the degree that this one has been, has had only two results; produced men who haven't a clue as to how to be a man so they over-react and become the "cave-man" that they aren't supposed to become, and a whole bunch of women who act like Beaver Cleaver's mom from the tv show as they wear a summer dress, pearl necklace and high-heels while they clean house, bake cookies and prattle on about whatever.
So now we have Sarah Palin who comes on the scene with photos of dead moose and wolves in front of her while she holds the rifle, and she has, "gasp....CHILDREN AND SHE'S NOT STAYING HOME TO RAISE THEM...GASP, DOUBLE GASP"
"OH MY GAWD SHE'S ACTING LIKE SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T LIKE BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO......SHE'S ACTING LIKE.......A MAN!"
Sarah Palin, to someone like me who was raised in much the same type of frontier, "root hog or die" environment is simply a "hard woman" who adapted to circumstances and knows how to stand erect and get the job done. She very much reminds me of my mother (who was a horse-whisperer/trainer" before that became popular) and of my great-aunt who rode a conestoga to town and was the first female principle and then superintendent of schools in a little district in deep South Texas. They were achievers who intimidated weaker men and women.
Just because you as a man aren't used to dealing with strong women doesn't mean you can't learn. Just because you as a woman aren't used to dealing with what female liberation claims it wants but is frightened by, doesn't mean that you too cannot become an Aikido player who is not a "woman". The player that got that comment is very feminine but when she needs to be hard I'll be the one selling tickets to the butt-kicking and my wife and I (she's a hard-as-nails 6th degree black belt herself) will sit in the stands with some hot sake and watch her surprise the poor fool.
The same can be said for any woman who sticks with Aikido long enough and for any man who sticks with it also. Training heads-up with strong women produces men who are more balanced and who no longer fear a stong woman. Both sexes benefit because both have a new appreciation of the full development possible and begin to understand how either a man or woman can be gentle and hard all at the same time.
The Japanese called it "Balance".
You don't have to vote for Palin unless her politics is what you're looking for but you should respect her as a strong person. Don't have a herd mentality that says because she can think for herself and is govenor of the largest state in the union, she's an intellectual lightweight. She hasn't built the career that she's living today by baking cookies so I strongly suspect that she's a quick study and is able to quickly adapt and learn whatever it would take to become VP or Prez.
If you think Palin's a lightweight because that's become the way in which you identify and vocalize your primal fear of her as a strong individual then I've got some "lightweights" in the dojo I'll be happy to introduce your to; they're called "Hard Men and Hard Women"; normal people who just happen to live life as "Aikido Players".
And if Palin really does become VP then email me and let me know who'll be selling the tickets to the Palin-Pelosi gunfight at high noon. That's one that even an old cowboy like me wants a front row seat to.
"Hey! Where can an old boy from South Texas get a taco and a cerveza? Pass the sal y lima, por favor!"
L.F. Wilkinson Sensei
Aikibudo Kancho
Aikibudokan, Houston, TX
October 2008
