Itty bitty victories

This is one of those entries in which I attempt to connect something learned in martial arts to life in general. For the most part, kung fu is much simpler than life in general. But anyway ...

We do this form at my school that translates into English as "Short Stick of the Northern Beggar," which I have been translating as "What the Hell Am I Supposed to Be Doing With This Stick?"

I've been trying to learn it for over a month, but it's just been a jumbled, patternless set of moves in my head, an impossible-to-memorize bunch of random poking and swinging and whapping gestures. There's been nothing deliberate in my execution of the form. At best, there have been some accidental resemblences to the way the form is supposed to go.

But last night it finally clicked (due in no small part to the good instruction I got), and I was able to see the pattern, enough so that I could even write most of the form down from memory after class.

Not that I know the form. Not that I'm even sure all the moves I wrote down are correct. But discernable learning took place, whereas before all I had in regard to the form was discernable frustration.

I treasure those small moments of learning. I recently learned that my composition classes go much better when I just give my students a writing assignment and then discuss and analyze what they wrote at the end of class. I was making myself crazy trying to build hour-long lectures and hunting down good reading assignments. Now my class prep tends to take much less time, and I think the students are getting more out of the class sessions. I'm certainly happy about those things, but I'm also quite pleased to have learned something about myself as a teacher, amateur though I remain.

Things I learn that apply to life in general are perhaps the most rewarding, because they not only improve my life, but also those of the people around me. How long has it taken me to realize that action is so often preferable to inaction? That risking pissing someone off by doing something is so often better than pissing them off by failure to do something (as long as the thing you're doing is a decent thing to do, of course). How long did it take me to learn that I bite my tongue far too often? Why should it take decades to learn that simple thing? But I've learned. Or at least, I'm learning.

Writing is a little different, of course, because every time I sit down to do it, it feels pretty much like I've never written a story before in my life. But realizing that was a pretty valuable lesson, too.

Just a bit of reflection and rambling on a Wednesday morning. Gotta go print out stuff for today's classes. Do carry on, and have a good day.