I missed the draft by less than two years. I missed being bused by less than two years. I forget what the third big thing was that I missed three big things that happened during the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies.

Aikido, by the way, is the martial art of peace. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is to take what you need and leave the rest. That was an enlightening thing for me. I think she may have thought I was putting her on to high of a pedestal. She wasn’t living up to my expectations outside of aikido, perhaps.

But I remembered her talking about her teacher. He was a Japanese guy who was an amazing martial artist but he would go outside, smoke cigarettes, and get drunk and the bar. And that was her lesson to me: take what you need and leave the rest.

Aikido is about harmony and moving in harmony with the world. When there is a situation that is out of balance such as when someone decides to attack you, aikido is about neutralizing that event without causing harm.

It is saying to the world: “you want to attack me but I am not your enemy.”

Aikido absorbs and transfers energy from one place to another. It’s not fighting even though it looks like fighting. No one ever gets hurt on purpose.

The guy who founded aikido in Japan was probably the most successful martial artist of the twentieth century. He was about 5ft. tall and took on all comers in any art and was never defeated.

But as he aged he realized that wasn’t what it was all about. He realized that he was going to get old and wouldn’t be able to defeat people. He came to the realization that perhaps winning wasn’t what it was all about anyway. He blended many different martial arts as well as his military history into a more peaceful organization and way of thinking.

He died in the nineteen sixties but there are still many of his students who are alive, including my teacher’s teacher.

So for me aikido has been a good spiritual, mental, physical, psychological grounding. It’s not religion, and it’s not spirituality but it’s something that you do over, and over, and over, and over again. Somehow you learn something important from all that. I don’t know what that is…