I'm taking my first karate lesson tomorrow. I'm a little anxious.
I think the last time I had formal private extracurricular instruction in sport of any kind, I was about ten. The sport was gymnastics. The second week of class, I came off the uneven parallel bars and landing flat on my back. I couldn't breathe correctly for several minutes. That was the end of gymnastics as far as I was concerned.
█████ and I went to observe a class at Tiger Schulmann's last Saturday morning. Then we had to fill out a questionnaire to sign up for our introductory class. We were asked to choose up to three reasons we had for taking karate:
- PHYSICAL CONDITIONING
- WEIGHT CONTROL
- SELF-DEFENSE
- SELF-CONFIDENCE
- SELF-DISCIPLINE
- ATTENTION SPAN
- MEDITATION
- FLEXIBILITY
And so forth.
Staring at the list, I couldn't wrap my mind around all the choices. I could have marked every last reason and it would have been reasonable honest. MEDITATION and FLEXIBILITY I threw out early because they seemed like tertiary goals—they would come with the territory. I threw out WEIGHT CONTROL because, despite the fact that I could stand to lose some, that seems like a secondary effect of the more important PHYSICAL CONDITIONING.
ATTENTION SPAN or SELF-DISCIPLINE? Both? I need to work on both, but it seems that my ATTENTION SPAN works pretty well once I actually summon the SELF-DISCIPLINE to sit down and start doing something. So I finally tossed out ATTENTION SPAN and kept SELF-DISCIPLINE.
I dithered over SELF-DEFENSE for a while. I raged inside for hours a few weeks ago when I was confronted by a bunch of drunken kids on the subway. The scene didn't turn violent, but it surely could have. But what I finally came to realize was that if I'd had the SELF-CONFIDENCE to tell the kids to fuck themselves right off the bat, instead of tolerating their bad behavior, things probably would have gone much better. I'm 5'11'' and over 200 pounds. I'm physically imposing, especially in my black leather coat. People don't usually fuck with me. I forget this, though, because inside I feel like the same skinny weakling who got pushed around in school. So finally I threw out SELF-DEFENSE. Let's work on that SELF-CONFIDENCE instead.
Okay, so that narrowed it down to:
- PHYSICAL CONDITIONING
- SELF-CONFIDENCE
- SELF-DISCIPLINE
Next, I had to write a sentence about why each goal was important to me. My sentences ran over the allotted space. It was like I was writing a compressed novel, à la J.G. Ballard. I read █████'s form. Her sentences fit neatly in the space. Moreover, her goals were phrased very positively. Mine were phrased rather negatively. I commented on this. "It's okay for us to be different, honey," said █████, something obvious that I sometimes forget. "Either way, we're both trying to improve."
True enough. So here it is thirty-odd hours until my first karate lesson. And I'm really scared.
And I'm excited to start improving, too.
