"Through Competition We Can Discover Ourselves."

Jet Li's film "Fearless" has always been one of my favorite movies.  It is a story of transformation.  It is a story about transforming the heart ,body,  mind and soul.

When I was a practicing martial artist , I came across this film and it was a great example of martial art's highest value of "Not Fighting."  There is a premise called the "warrior and scholar."  The right fist is the warrior.  The Left  hand is the scholar and it covers the  fist,,,meaning that the scholar applies thought to each potential fight to figure a way out ...so that you do not have to fight.  This concept has been a foundation to my life all these years.

In practicing marital arts, when it was time to spar,  I always had to check my emotions and my intent  on the deck.   Did I dislike this person, did I want to teach them a lesson, did I need to punch them hard, or just graze them?  Was I angry after a long work day and should not be fighting on the deck?

In the film, Jet Li wants to be the best fighter.  He fights and fights.  He challenges every good fighter in China.  His life becomes  all about winning.  About challenging.  About having the best reputation and being adored by all. His followers manage his fights and he has adoring fans.  His ego was huge and he treated people poorly.  He always  had  to be first at any cost and he was out of touch with his emotions and had a hair trigger temper.

In the film, Jet Li suffers many horrendous atrocities He ends up just about dead. He hits bottom and has to rebuild his life slowly and steadily. The story is about how he recovered and learned about the simple things in life.  Once he got back into competition , years later, he had an new perspective on competition and he had  learned about himself through it.

Like Jet Li in the film, I  too have learned a lot about myself through competition.  In the race yesterday, for example, as the pack ran away from me at the start line, I had to ask myself if winning was the goal.  It was not.  What was my goal?  What did I need to do at that very moment?  I just needed to keep moving forward and get to the finish line.  That was all.   I was competing with myself this day...and that was a great enough challenge to accomplish.  And I did it.

And as the Universe would have it, a competitor in my age group. came back along the inner field of the track and ran me in...telling me I was almost there...I could do  it.  And I did.

It is through competition that you learn about yourself and exactly what you are made of. 

Recovering What You've Lost

I met a new friend today at the track.  This is  our second get together as we  walk and run and talk and share our lives as we work out.  We are both working to get back into shape and become more slim.  Both of us agree it has been and continues t o be our  life long pursuit.  Both of us are  working to recover the health and fitness that we have lost....or working to recover the fitness that was had before a recent injury...or we are working to recover what we once were as athletes.

For me, I am recovering what was lost a long while back when I was a young teenager.  It was the time for the presidents physical fitness test.  We had to run a timed 400 meters once around the track.  Being already chubby and certainly not training to do this o r to run at all, I did not make it around and had to walk myself in. All the kids laughed at me and made fun of me.

In my adult life now as a runner, I went through a phase saying to myself, I wish that long ago,  some nice kid or the gym teacher could have walked me  in and companioned me to the finish line when I took that  physical fitness test long ago.For years, I could not make it once around the track. Then I realized that the adult Cece is a runner and she can now help the little girl of the past to the finish lines whenever that little one feels like giving  up.  After I realzed that, the track did not seems so large and  I knew I could make it!  I realized that I was carrying baggage in my brain about track running.

Now I know that I can recover what was lost on that track all those many years ago.  I can do this by  by running that 400 meters in the Sr. Olympics City games  coming up on 5/12/18.  This is a way, I can recover what was lost years a go.  Is it the exact same thing?  No, but I can prove to myself that I can do it! Actually, I have already proved to myself that I can do it.

As the universe would have it, in a run last week, I was on my way back into the finish line and all of a sudden I saw my coach come running out.  She companioned me in and ran me into the  finish line.   This fact also recovered what I had lost all those years ago,,, the desire for support and kindness.  ...and PS,  my coach did not know this story.

I believe that  in some occasions we really need to have a "do over" of a traumatic event...so we can do it correctly this time....so that we can recover what we have lost...so that it does not prevent us from succeeding in the future.

When I was teaching school too, when a child did something very wrong...at the soonest opportunity, I gave them the chance to do  the exact same thing over but correctly this time....it provided a healing element that allowed the child
 to" keep moving forward" on a positive rather than negative track.

So, when you see me crying my eyes out for joy on Saturday, you will know that  I have recovered the track race that the little one  could not run ....oh so many years  ago..
Cece/Sisi