With Age Comes Wisdom

 

With age comes wisdom

and the rest  🙁 

 

I’d like to start by saying, that this blog is not intended to come at you with sadness, I simply wished to share some thoughts.

 

Recently I have been thinking more and more about age.

They say,

‘Youth is wasted on the young’,

how true.

 

I recently wrote a blog titled, ‘What age is the best?’, with the general answer being,

 

‘Whatever age you are right now’,

true I guess, as long as it not being wasted.

 

When you are young you feel as though the world is your oyster and that you are indestructible, that probably stands for most of us I reckon, when you look back at some of the things you’ve done it’s so easy to think,

 

‘How the hell am I still alive?’

 

In Wing Chun, I feel that Forms are your textbooks, your theory, if you like, and Chi Sau, sparring, well this is your practice, and let’s face it:

 

‘Theory without practice is pointless,

and practice without theory is just misunderstood’

 

Oh, and just in case you’re worried by that statement…

That is not the be all and end all of it, for those of you not learning Wing Chun for fighting reasons, I do NOT mean that if you’re not fighting, you’re not developing, I do not mean that at all, you do not need to fight to enjoy or reap the benefits from training Wing Chun.

 

You can interpret that statement as:

‘We can all READ about a Form,

but unless we can actually play it properly,

then this knowledge is pointless’

 

Anyway,,,

As a youth we have the drive and the energy to do whatever we want, but we have no knowledge, understanding or experience.

When we get older and we finally have the experience and the wisdom, we also begin to slow down, take longer to heal, and realise the consequences of our younger selves when we believed we were indestructible (we were not).

 

As a young person you would receive invitations to parties, these parties, over the years change:

From birthday parties, to:

Engagement parties, to:

Stag and hen do’s, to:

Weddings, moving up the years to baby showers, christening etc and eventually to wakes.

 

As the years go by, we see less and less engagements, wedding invitations become few and far between, but the bereavements seem to grow in numbers, and when these too begin to decline, well, that’s when we start to think of ourselves as the last of a dying breed.

 

Now do not get me wrong, I do not wish to wield the sword of depression and just leave it there, yes, we have all lost loved ones, some more than their fair share, and this is hard on everyone left behind, but just as in the reason for recording events in history, if we learn from this and turn it into something positive, then this is not a life lost.

 

Let us remind ourselves NOT to wait until things are too late (even though they rarely are) but to tell ourselves to get off of our arses and do something positive, NOW, TODAY.

 

After all the shit we have had to put up with over this last year, let’s look to the future in a positive light and make a difference, not only to ourselves but to all those around us too.

Isn’t this what we’re supposed to do as Martial Artists, to protect the weak and make the world a better place?

 

Find something great in your life today and let’s have a spectacular tomorrow.

 

Much love everyone.