The ‘Why’ of the Karate Stories

September 1, 2023

 

I sit at this desk, a low Muji dining table, facing the window overlooking Dunman School dorms. I have been writing on it since my daughter got married and I converted her room into my writing room. Outside the day is sunny with a slight haze in the air. These are my last four months (or less) of sitting here. I don't know how I will recreate this 'womb' I've created.

 

Today I have been reflecting on why I want to write these stories in the first place. 

 

This year it is twenty years in karate for me — a short time compared to many who are on this path. What started as a ‘dabbling’ hobby took up more and more of my time and life. When I pause to look back, I feel surprised to see where I have got to within it. I don’t know why but it has become a sort of primary identity that so many — close friends, work colleagues, volunteer buddies — identity me with. I don’t refute this but inside me it doesn’t feel right. 

 

I have been feeling I am more than just this, and simultaneously seeing that I have lost parts of my identity to karate. Maybe not lost because one can’t lose what one is – so lost touch with is more accurate. To the me that was twenty years ago, karate was a side path which I never expected to become a ‘main-road’ of my life journey. But as life changed, I adapted and here I am today.

 

When one loses touch with a part of the self, it is hard to get back to it. And it is also possible that that part has shriveled and died, or changed in an unrecognizable way. To put it more honestly, I have felt increasingly scared that I don’t know how to recover those parts and will die never knowing myself fully.

 

So, writing the karate pieces and submitting them to my critique group was an attempt to find through the writing something more of who I am. Surely, in this journey and the way I have been through it — the way I dealt with challenges and obstacles, the way I celebrated success, or healed, and the friends I made, the teachers I loved — might help me know myself better. I’m hoping this micro journey is a microcosm of me and not just a diversion that took me over. 

 

Who knows where it will lead.

 

Though I began seeking a theme since August 14, I haven’t come close to finding one yet – just the words, purpose and identity stand out, along with self-doubt/self-worth. I will be sharing this process of gathering these stories from my memory and writing them down. I am not really thinking of publishing them though I sent them to my critique group where I got comments on craft and what people found fascinating.  I feel a strong need to find the narrative, the story, of this huge part of my recent life, and know myself a little bit better. 

 

I really appreciate those who read my rambling enquiries and please do share your thoughts if you see a pattern, a connectivity, in the things I share. Much obliged.   

A ‘Theme’ in my Karate Stories?

August 31, 2023

 

One of my ‘loose’ goals this month was to do more writing. It has been pathetically sparse for ten months or so. Exhaustion due to poor health, and an expansion of external commitments, led to me de-prioritizing my writing always. 

Writing is one of the things that grounds me so not putting it centre-stage felt a lot like self-sabotage, or some sort of dysfunctional behavior, possibly stemming from a fear. I needed to de-clutter and make time to even figure out the fear and I decided to ‘give notice’ and quit from one of my writing critique groups even though the group is the very thing that forces me to write whenever it is my time to submit. But I also spend an average of 4.5 hours per week working on feedback on other people’s writing. My ability to give useful feedback has improved (my co-writers said so) and certainly being forced to write 5000 words every four to six weeks was the pressure I needed to not completely lose touch with writing. But I wanted to go back and re-find an internal writing flow, something that was motivated from within. The writing I submitted also was haphazardly written whenever my name came up, and I wasn’t working on any project in a coherent manner. I submitted two short stories, revival of chapter one of my fantasy novel (the first thing I ever wrote), and six other pieces — all on karate, in the last ten months. I never made the effort to go back and revise any of the submissions after receiving feedback. I wanted to write differently, though I didn’t know what I even meant by that. Perhaps I wanted to allow my mind to roam empty spaces and let the unconscious speak in my words. I wanted to reach deeper and not do the ‘surface kind of writing’ I had been doing. 

 

It was only on August 14, when I finally found a whole writing day. Having written six pieces about karate over the last months, I thought I’d start making a collection of karate experiences and move them towards a memoir. But just like this blog post – a bit rambly, I found the stories didn’t have any identifiable theme. Each one was a distinct experience – strong, but unique from the others. Two were from my first months in karate, one was my shodan test gasshuku, the fourth my first year of teaching, another on attending a CI, and the last titled the 108 kata ritual, and what that meant to me. Hmm… yes, nothing cohesive. 

 

And all attempts on investigating a theme, a thread, any connective elements in my karate journey, fizzled out, deflated like a car tyre with a leaky valve.

 

I have a ton of questions – which is good. 

·      Why did I embrace something I sucked at with complete commitment? Why did I keep going when people made fun of me? When I failed tests? (Doing something you are terrible at does build character)

·      Why did I keep the dojo going when Sensei left Singapore and I didn’t know how to teach? How did I cope with imposter syndrome? What propelled me to not hand it over to somebody else when there were more black belts in Singapore?

·      What messes did I make? Why am I still here when my body says rest?

·      Has it taught me anything about myself? About life? Am I different because of it?

 

But is there a theme? A prerequisite for shaping a memoir. If there is I can't see it.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke did recommend loving the questions and being patient towards all that was unsolved in the heart. So, I am living the questions for now and maybe on some distant day, gradually, without noticing, I will live into the answer. The prerequisite for finding answers though is keeping an attention on the unresolvedness of things even when it all feels elusive, wispy, transient. Like that thing you see from the corner of your eye and it disappears when you turn your head to look. 

 

I guess I did write a bit more without external pressure this month!

Ghosting

August 29, 2023

Ghosting is defined as, ‘abruptly cutting off communication with someone without explanation’. It is also described as passive aggressive behavior and compared to gaslighting. 

 

Recently someone who ghosted me suddenly made small talk with me. It was in a social situation, and it stunned me momentarily, and I stammered out a reply. But it left me quite unsettled. It happened on my birthday and I didn’t want to be stuck with dealing with negative emotions around this situation, which had created a fair amount of disturbance earlier too, so I shelved it to enjoy my day.

 

The feelings it generated continued within and I don’t want to carry them anymore and writing is often my way of processing.

 

People deal with conflict differently. I like to try to put my feelings on the table and sort it out as soon as possible. Others are conflict avoidant, not necessarily for mean reasons, but because they just don’t know how to address it — maybe never learnt or have been hurt in the past. I don’t really know. Some dodge dealing with it when they feel they have the upper hand and because they lack empathy for the other person. Many can pretend it doesn’t exist and continue to have a strained relationship, and even conversations with the other. I on the other hand find it difficult to make even small talk with a person who I have an unresolved conflict with. And this is where I am. This is who I am. 

 

The person, I’ll call him X, was part of a group I lead. He wanted to leave to follow another path and it felt like a loss, but I encouraged him to follow his heart. The conflict began last year after a conversation in which X said something that left me wondering about the loyalty of others in the group. I wonder if he knew what he was doing or he just said it inadvertently. It left me distraught for weeks,  more correct months. The next time I met the person, a few weeks after that conversation I had a hard time talking normally to him. 

 

But I reached out the next to next time we met in person, apologizing for what I felt I had done wrong, trying to resolve things, and inviting him to continue being part of our group even as he was finding his own path. I didn’t think the paths were mutually exclusive, though the world may disagree. X wouldn’t make eye contact with me and after that didn’t speak to me though our paths crossed as we have common friends. 

 

I felt I had hurt him. I kept blaming myself for this, wondering what I could have done differently etc. A couple of months ago I sent another text saying I was open to listening to his side of things hoping for a conversation that might resolve things. X responded by leaving the WhatsApp groups that were common to us. 

 

I felt a shock, but I decided to move on and stopped thinking about clarifying things. I know that not every conflict can be resolved. I moved towards finding my own peace around it.

 

Recently while I was away on a trip X participated in the group I lead. I truly don’t know yet how to write about the range of feelings I felt when I heard this. Shock, anger, disgust, total loss of respect for X, are among a few. 

 

But if I had ever felt that the ghosting was just in my mind, on that day I knew it hadn't been. I felt something hit me so deeply that it unbalanced me and made me question myself and even those around me. It was not pleasant to deal with it. 

 

So, this third or maybe fourth shock, of having X casually talk to me as it everything was ok is not something I can handle. Someone might say that X is trying to reach out. But it feels offensive to me. It feels like X wants to deal with things on his own terms, and completely lacks the sensibility that his actions had left me feeling hurt and snubbed. 

 

I’m trying to figure out my response to this. It’s something that has haunted me for months. If it was somebody who I feel might respond to my overture of having an honest conversation, I would suggest it. But X has rejected that twice already, and I feel too vulnerable to suggest it. But I do know that I cannot pretend that it’s ok either. 

 

Maybe I need therapy to figure this out — it has unnerved me enough. I’m noticing that even sharing it with others makes me feel fragile. But I am interested in knowing if others have faced something similar, and how they have dealt with it?

Sixty-Three

August 25, 2023

My body has decided to quit on me and insists I slow down and try to write. I skipped two activities that I usually love in the last 24 hours. It’s been hard to write as it feels like a fast flowing current is always rushing through my mind. A writer friend told me long time ago that one can only dip in and pick out an handful to put on a blank page. 

 

So, two days before my 63^rd, I sit down and attempt that. I like to do a birthday reflection each year. Take bits of time off during my week and look at the year and my hopes for the next. This year my entire life is demanding attention with questions and more questions. Who am I, Why have I become who I am, Why is my body not co-operating with my desires, Why can’t I love myself more at this moment in time, Who do I want to be, etc. Perhaps aging and the growing sense of mortality make these urgent.

 

Anyone’s life is a huge story, a huge plot. A theme from one of the main sub-plots of my life has been prominent in this current rushing through. Trust.

 

It’s not surprising to me that in this patriarchal world that I live in, breaches of trust have come from male figures. My father died when I was ten and the male elders of the joint family system who were supposed to care for us betrayed my little family. And after his death the little girl that was me, was preyed upon by men in the family, again those who were supposed to protect me. And then again in my 36^th year I was betrayed by three men who I trusted most. One of these betrayals has healed considerably while the other two that were never acknowledged still feel confusingly raw.

 

I don’t know how healing can happen when the betrayer chooses to deny the betrayal? But I have grappled with internal healing and being able to trust masculine energy in this world. 

 

Last October after a betrayal (which I wrote about in a post Tiny Scattered Thoughts) I had two more shocks in quick succession by December. A physical trauma and another betrayal. And without realizing it I began running away from looking deeply into those shocks and they slipped into that deep abyss that is always beneath life — the abyss that can at any time sever our, perhaps illusionary, connection to reality. I needed slow healing but instead I packed my days with activity and did not deal with either the physical or the emotional pain in a soft, but controlled, way. 

 

I dealt with the physical trauma when pain pushed me into ER but I kept running from the emotional trauma, of the feeling of betrayal, and with that fear, and generalized anxiety, grew. And I ran more. 

 

For me healing comes in slow blank times. Finally my body demanded that I stop running and since last week I have tried to drop out of some activities and create empty spaces in which I can examine the shocks, the abyss. 

 

Betrayal is hard to face, especially when it comes from someone you trust. It confuses you, makes you wonder if it was your fault. It makes you leave your body and mind that is in unbearable ache. You feel foggy. Your decisions are off or you feel unable to decide. You feel like a deer caught in the lights of a car about to collide with it. Flight or fight or paralysis are the modes you operate from. 

 

And that has been my reality. I am finally facing the intense dark emotions that it has created, which I have suppressed and somatised into bodily ache. I am writing about it and though I have concerns on how to make it public I know I want to write cleanly, deeply, about it. I will only share it when the feeling of hurt, of anger, confusion, and of wanting retribution, has passed. Hence here it still is vague. 

 

Heavy topic pre-birthday. I crave lightness and joy for my 63^rd. But life is what it is and some birthdays are wonderfully happy and others not so much.