Perfection

I do look forward to Andy Watson’s blog.  His is an unflinchingly honest approach in his journey of self analysis and the hunt for the perfection necessary to be graded a 6^th Dan.  He also writes exceedingly well and expresses matters far beyond my abilities.

Anyway, he wrote yesterday of an almost endorphin-induced satisfaction regarding his Iaido training the other night.  As an ex-runner (and now budoka) I wholly agree.  Casting my mind back to the running days there was almost always the “runner’s high” after any sort of distance.  The medical quacks might explain it away as a purely psychological response to a physiological imbalance but it doesn’t detract from the importance of the feeling in making you come back, time and time again to punish yourself on the hills, trails, track, etc.  But it wasn’t just the endorphins.  Not by any stretch.

There was a series of races called the Tour of Epping back in the early to mid 1990’s.  Five races spread over 5 consecutive days.  One of the races was called the Forest Run (or something like that) and wound its way in and around part of the Epping Forest.  Very hilly and almost like your worst nightmare Cross Country race.  A week after that run I drove miles back to the course just to try it alone in the relative heat of an English summer’s night before it got dark.  While trying to get the old legs pumping to climb one of the steep, dusty, dry muddy hills there was an immense thunderstorm and downpour.  Rivulets of water were pouring down off the hill past me as I slogged my way up and I could barely see for the sheets of rain or hear for the thunderclaps.  For some, to this day unfathomable reason, I was both in tears and laughter at the same time.  It was a crazy, profound and yet life affirmingly perfect moment.  As well as stupid in a thunderstorm of that severity, I guess, but yet the memory of that night will remain with me forever.

These days the crazy, profound and life affirming feelings are maybe not so endorphin induced as before but they’re still here.  There still here in the perfection of the moment.  The perfect sword cut (as opposed to the many of mine that aren’t).  They’re in the lesson finally learned after weeks of trying and a frustrating technique is finally mastered.  They’re here when I have to instruct and I see the penny drop in a student’s understanding as something is explained.  They’re here when the tasks of a work project finally come together.  They are also in that one or two fleeting moments of a duet where there is a tantalisingly perfect harmony before the singers depart off in an almost different melody.  They're always in some places I can predict and yet others sneak up on me, unbidden.

Strange blog, this one.