Dojo Magic

September 15, 2025

            I think I must be the world’s worst ‘re-settler’ or even ‘settler’. Been home two mornings, and a full day already, and I am still wo(a)ndering around the home fiddling with this or that and not doing much. I used to be better, but though I moved into the cats’ home just 20 mins away and just for two weeks, I feel like I was living in an alternate universe for an unknown number of years, where language was distorted and words disappeared from memory, and even when I went out for a bit I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I’m thinking sleep deprivation can do weird things to the mind-body, but I need to figure this out—why each time I live at the cats’ home I feel disconnected from the city I am living in and the life I ‘normally’ live. 

            Yesterday I arrived at the dojo from my own home in that altered mental state. Only one of the brown belts was there doing some stretching, and I joined him. One of the other black belts was prepping the lesson for yesterday and he had got stuck because of rain and was late. I’m not sure how we got there but we found ourselves in a conversation about death, living alone, aging, and meaning at different stages of life. I shared how as we aged spouse and I became more dependent on each other and my fears of being the one being left behind. I spoke of how I felt I had done almost everything I had wanted to do in life which money didn’t constrain, and I wasn’t holding out for a long life. The brown belt talked of his grandma who lived almost forty years after her spouse passed on and what the last years of her life were like. When the black belt came in, changed into his gi, and joined us on the black mats of the gym we rent on Sundays, he said, “I was thinking this same thing on my way here.” He shared a bit of his thoughts and the memory that triggered his reflections, then we all stood up and trained hard for the rest of the time.

            It was magical. Outside it was dull and cloudy and sitting on the black mats felt cosy and conducive for such a conversation. Then hitting the bags first, and then doing other training, the thoughts we had shared and heard softy assimilated within. I have experienced such magic in the Singapore dojo community—on Sundays when fewer or us train and we linger for a chat, or on Saturdays when several of us go out for brunch to the coffee shop at Aperia and have conversations where anything could come up—from career explorations, post-retirement plans, existential issues, the terrible genocide in Gaza, something going on locally, besides of course thoughts related to martial arts. 

            We are a dojo, and we train hard together, but we also meet weekly, and the bonds that this regularity creates allows space for intimate sharing. People who join the dojo take their time to find their comfort levels within but most end up feeling this camaraderie. We also have had disagreements but today I want to bask in the magic of our small karate family in Singapore. I suppose this magic happens in any group where people meet to practice a common passion in an atmosphere of co-operation and not competition. We listen to each other and encourage people towards their dreams. 

            I didn’t know that I came ‘here’ today to say this. I merely sat at my desk, flipped open my lap top, and opened up my blog to help me gather my scattered self after finding it difficult to settle back into my tiny home, where paint smells still waft in from open windows, and I hear workmen chatting somewhere close, and I worry if they will be painting something outside the window or in the corridor and I will be back to battling allergies—already my ears feel a bit inflamed and the eyes burn. 

I know this time I will pull on my sandals, grab a notebook and perhaps the laptop and head out. And I am about to do just this soon, as I don’t have any left-overs for lunch and am too lazy to put together something. But the magic of yesterday and writing here today has grounded me a ton.