Happy Anniversary - Thirty Years Since Coming To America

I suppose there’s something about thirty, over twenty, that makes it stand out more. Perhaps it’s the simple fact that it’s ten more. Maybe things were different at twenty. Things were less busy, more hopeful, and there was a greater willingness to delude oneself.

I’m talking about years, of course, and I’m doing so because the other day it dawned on me that this year, 2015, marks my thirtieth anniversary of living in the United States and also my thirtieth year as a Taekwondo student. For me, these two things will forever go hand-in-hand. They are and will always be connected; two halves of the same whole, separate yet intrinsically one.

I started martial arts, formal training, back home in Hong Kong when I was sixteen. I studied Shotokan Karate. A month or so later, I was flying to the United States where I was going to live. I knew that was the plan but it was like a dream; surreal that I was actually going to live in the place I’d only visited once before and seen numerous times in film and television. It’s not like I wasn’t excited but I also didn’t – and honestly still don’t – know why we were making the move to begin with. Martial Arts was very much in my mind and heart at the time – and it still is - so it was natural that I wanted to continue my training. I couldn’t find a Shotokan dojo (Japanese martial art school) so I enrolled in a Koeikan Karate school. At the same time, I enrolled in a Taekwondo dojang (Korean martial arts school) and, shortly thereafter, I left the Koeikan dojo and made Taekwondo my main art. (To varying depths, since then,  I’ve gotten my feet wet with Escrima, Judo, Hapkido and Gung Fu.)

My involvement in Taekwondo was partially motivated by the fact that my school In Hong Kong had (might still have) a Taekwondo club and I was supposed to go back to Hong Kong, after securing US citizenship, to finish my secondary education and I would join the school club to continue my training. I never did. So, in some ways, unbeknownst to be at the time, I think martial arts – in particular Taekwondo – has served as a connection to home.

All of this reminiscing –pining for the carefree days of youth even – comes at a time when I say goodbye to the first half of my forties and hello to the part that’s closer to fifty. Tomorrow, on Janury 31^st, I turn forty-six.  Last weekend, on the radio, it was one of those ‘Best of the 80s’ weekends and the 1980s was my generation. I caught song after song that were hits when I left Hong Kong and when I was slowly learning how to live in America. Last Sunday, I came across a YouTube clip of Jim Diamond’s “Should’ve Known Better” which was one of my favourite songs as a kid. Shoot, it may be one of my favourite songs ever. Naturally, the bandwidth of my nostalgia radar has been on high since.

As I look to forty-six, there are definite thoughts that come to mind. I think of how there are likely less years ahead of me than I’ve already left behind. I think of how the time I have to make a success of myself is diminishing and how the energy I have to do so is also waning. The desire is not however but, in some ways, I wish it were too. Then I could just give in to where I am and who I am and not worry about trying to better myself for my sake, my son’s sake and my family’s sake. But that’s me. I can’t. I have to forge on because of the ‘what if’ factor. I’ll never know if I don’t try, right? More importantly, I’m a martial artist. We train for technique and self-defense and competition and discipline but, ultimately, we train to battle the most difficult enemy of all – ourselves. In Taekwondo, in particular, we have ‘Mental Training.’ It’s a kind of Ten Commandments; a code of conduct for our inner and outer lives. Since the first day I took class I’ve tried to live by that code. Number Ten is ‘Always finish what you start.’ So, whatever it is – my dream to be my son’s Taekwondo instructor, my drive to become a working writer, my need to leave some kind of legacy for my son, my attempts to regain my fitness  – I will finish what I start. Whether I get there or not is another matter altogether because it is in the journey that we gather wisdom and as the Zen saying goes, it’s “process, not product” that matters.

My actual Taekwondo anniversary doesn’t happen until October. My anniversary of coming to the United States isn’t until July. But, my birthday is tomorrow and when 7:30am Manila time hits, I will be forty-six and when that happens I will male a vow to leave the best legacy for my son that I can – that I finish what I start and I never give up.

Ten Years

In a week, my wife and I will be married for ten years. Of course, many of you reading this have been married for much longer than us. Some of you, a little less. Honestly, I don't know if I feel that we've been married a long time or a short time. I've known my wife, after all, since we were kids and our dads have been friends since the 1950s so our families have been connected and, in many ways, my wife's and my lives have been intertwined from the get go.

Nonetheless, 'ten year anniversary' has a nice ring to it. There's still so much more ahead of us and there's still so much more to learn and things to experience, to live and cry and laugh about, through which we can grow together - especially as our son gets older - but there's a certain feeling of accomplishment with ten years. We don't know it all but there are times when we've been the ones people who come to us for advice. It's like we've earned some street cred in the ways of the married. 

It reminds me of what one of my Taekwondo masters and examiners said when I got my fourth dan (degree black belt) in 2001. (I started Taekwondo training in 1985.) He said that he respects everyone who trains and takes the bumps and bruises but it isn't until the person has been doing it for, at least, ten years that he regards him as a 'martial artist.' He went on to remark that many people start martial arts - and, remember, for us masters, martial arts is more than kicking and punching, self-defense and trophies - but after a month, six months, one year, three years later they've stopped training and never come back. Ten years, for this master, was a milestone, not just because of the time, but because in ten years of training the practitioner begins to understand and accept things about himself. In ten years, with regular practise, a student can get to his third dan, a degree before 'master.' And, whether in martial arts or marriage, understanding and acceptance are key ingredients to getting through and being successful. 

Life, particularly through marriage, is much the same way. These ten years haven't always been roses and rainbows. There have been struggles mixed in with the smooth sailing, tears, both sad and happy, and yet we've come through them each time with better knowledge of our individual selves and our partnership. Certain words and their meanings take on greater significance  with marriage, too. I'm talking about words like patience, compromise, time, me and I; things we, as humans, take for granted when we're single but change drastically when your life is now responsible to and for a wife and, in our case, a son. With approximately 50% of American marriages ending in divorce, it's nice to know that my wife and I aren't a statistic. In fact, the numbers are greater for subsequent marriages. First time marriages have a 41% chance of ending in divorce. Second time marriages is at 60% and third time is 73%. I'm not saying that divorce is always a bad thing. I have friends who've gotten divorced and they're better off for it. Sometimes things just don't work out and it's better to get out of a bad situation rather than staying in it and making things worse. When getting married, though, you like to hope and believe the marriage will work,  otherwise, why do it? In my friends' cases, divorce wasn't something they pursued whimsically at the first time of trouble. That's not any good either. 

As we get to our ten year and look ahead to the next ten, I want to thank my wife. She's given me the courage to do lots of things I probably wouldn't have done without her - pursue, earnestly, my writing dreams; compete at the US Taekwondo National Championships; try out for a spot on the US Taekwondo Poomsae (Forms) team, become a more active member of our community (I'm pretty reclusive), take a weekly dance class, to name a few. She's also a source and reminder of positive energy. She's a listener and helps me everyday to be the best version of me I can be and, to that end, she's the best partner I can have to be the best father I can be to our son. 

So, to end, I'd just like to thank her for everything she's given me over the last ten years and tell her, in front of the whole world (well, my blog following world anyway), that I love her. Happy Anniversary, darling. 

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary

I’ve been so busy that it wasn’t until the end of the day last Friday, as I was riding home on the team bus from a volleyball match, that I realized it was my 27th anniversary of becoming a Taekwondo student. Actually, to be honest, I don’t really remember the exact date of my first Taekwondo class but I do know it was in October 1985. I can’t find my copy of the enrollment contract and with my parents living in The Philippines it would be too much to try to find the cashed cheque or bank statement from then to pinpoint the exact date. I was sixteen, we had just moved to the United States from Hong Kong and they were paying for my martial arts studies. The 26th and 16th and even the 9th of the month stand out in my head - and, funnily, they’re also birthdays of former secondary school classmates and the 16th is the birthday of one of my friends who got me started in martial arts - but it’s the 26th that sticks out the most so I use it as my anniversary.

When I think that I’ve been a Taekwondoist for twenty-seven years, it astonishes me. People do things for long periods but in today’s day and age, with so many things to choose from and so many things being seasonal, it’s hard to imagine sticking with something this long. I’m not sure of the exact statistics but I think in the mid 1980s, when I started Taekwondo, it was something like 1 in 5 marriages ended in divorce. Today, I think it’s worse at 50%. With something so sacred having such an iffy chance of lasting, how has something seemingly trivial stayed with me?

When I look at my middle school and high school students, a compartmentalized and seasonal life is evident. Fall is for football or soccer, the winter is for basketball or swimming or gymnastics, the spring is for lacrosse or softball/baseball, and the summer is for holiday. Even if the student does more than one activity a season, the activity time is broken up by days of the week and is a cafeteria of sports, arts and music. (Whether a child should do just one activity and concentrate on it at an early age or do many activities and narrow his or her focus at an older age is a discussion for another blog.)

So, when I look at my martial arts involvement and development, amidst the other things I did then and do now, it pleasantly surprises me that I’ve been doing Taekwondo for so long. I think my longevity - and I believe others who have been doing anything for as long and longer than I’ve been a Taekwondoist will tell you the same thing - is because I didn’t and haven’t given my Taekwondo evolution any kind of timeline. With sports, a person’s career ends. Even in some arts, like dance, the person’s performance career ends even though he or she may turn to teaching, choreography, running his or her own dance company, etc.

With martial arts, and not just Taekwondo, there is a finite part - found in the sports versions of them - and an infinite part. The latter is what the do (Japanese and Korean; tao in Chinese) in Taekwondo, Karate-do, Judo, Kendo and so on means. The word means ‘way’ and it pertains to a way of life; tenets of character development, etiquette, courtesy, respect (towards oneself and others) and humility that the martial artist tries to follow regardless of his successes and failures in and out of the sports side of martial arts. The do pertains as much, if not more, to the inner aspects of one’s life as it does to the outer (physical, technical and combat). In fact, in martial arts, the martial part does exist with respect to the practitioner being able to defend himself but, ultimately, it is about the battles we all have within ourselves - conflicts against laziness, cheating, bigotry, being judgmental, arrogance, impatience, the inability or lack of desire to forgive, forgiving without forgetting, pride and others.

And that’s the beauty of Taekwondo and other martial arts. It’s not like a sport that has finite goals like winning a gold medal every four years, a championship at the end of the season, setting and breaking records, beating a particular opponent. Yes, you can set goals each year to win the championship again or score more goals than the previous season but those are finite, black-and-white goals. Being human, which I believe is the greyest area of all, martial arts fits perfectly with the ever-changing inner turmoil and inner peace within all of us.

With twenty-seven years of martial arts under my belt, which, yes, is black and awards me the title of ‘master,’ I am still evolving. I may be a master in some of the technical aspects of Taekwondo. I may have even mastered and conquered certain parts of my character but humans experience struggles everyday and what I’ve learnt through martial arts helps me handle them. Do I win all the time? No, but when I lose it’s with the knowledge that I can face those demons that bested me today and overcome them tomorrow.