I was the guest instructor at a school recently and there was one particular student who was sweeping the floor when I came in and obviously the janitor of the day.
His Sensei informed me that he has been disrespectful and let his anger get out of hand during sparring the week before and that he was serving his punishment.
After class his Sensei asked if I could speak to him. I didn’t know much about him so I started by explaining about control. I explained that I know several people that work in prisons and I know one main thing that all people in prison have in common, and that’s control. The lack of. I explained that we all have a conversation going on in our head and we must listen to the good voice. That’s the one we want to have in control. It’s kind of like a crane operator. There’s a guy hundreds of feet in the air controlling the operation of the crane. If he messes up there’s big problems. There’s a conversation like when I watched cartoons as a kid and the subject of the cartoon had an angel on each shoulder. A black one and a white one on opposite shoulders. They were trying to convince the guy to do good or bad. It’s all about control and which one we choose.
Lack of control is the thing that gets us all in trouble. The rough spots in my life have been because of lack of control or following the wrong voice.
I explained to the student that the reason I was even talking to him was that his Sensei asked me to. That was because she cared. His mother was standing there and was shaking her head. I said the reason you are in class is because she cares about you. I asked about his friends and his mother said he doesn’t have any friends. She said he’s a bully in school. I told him that bully’s don’t have friends. I said, do you want to know how to make friends? I said “hey nice shirt!” He looked down and smiled. I said see you smiled. That’s all you need to do is say something nice about someone and they’ll start to like you. You just learn to control what you say.
If you want to do anything you have to listen to the right voice and choose the correct course.
Funny thing is that the lesson I taught was on control. How to develop control of you techniques. How to spar without injuring your opponent. It’s very important to develop that kind of control because practice would otherwise be dangerous and painful.
The more control we have the more success we can expect.
