Is The Purpose Of Life To Be Happy?

Is the purpose if life to be happy? It seems to me that the ‘successful’ people thrusting their ‘happiness’ in our face on every social media media platform every day are actually the opposite, behind their masks (and I know plenty of them) they are deeply troubled and flawed people. They are using that facade to sell ‘happiness on a stick’ to other deeply troubled and flawed people. They think that attention, fame and wealth will create the contentment they seek and their customers are forever chasing the tail of happiness that is just disappearing around the corner in front … Continue reading Is The Purpose Of Life To Be Happy?

I’m A Man’s Man

I’m a man’s man. We don’t show pain.Not physical, emotional or mental.We don’t accept help of any kind.We’d rather die than ask. We aren’t afraid of getting hurt in a fight.We are afraid of being beaten.We don’t read instructions or maps.We’d rather die than not be the breadwinner. All emotion is sucked inward.It comes out as silence or rage.You can’t make us talk about them.You can’t make us express them. We just don’t have the capacity.We’re a dying breed.Often through passive suicide.Because we also don’t go to the doctor.Better to die early before we need assistance.Or get frail, or useless. … Continue reading I’m A Man’s Man

Dealing With Toxic People

Do you feel guilty when others around you are soaked in misery? Don’t. Because if they are genuinely suffering, empathy requires a soft front and a strong back to help, you suffering along with them out of guilt doesn’t help. There are also manipulative people who use and exaggerate their own suffering, sometimes even unwittingly, because they can see it makes you feel guilty and they either want to control you or just enjoy making you miserable as well. If you are an empathic person this is really difficult, these people might be at work, family or friends, it’s all … Continue reading Dealing With Toxic People

Do I Want My Youth Back?

Insight while training this morning… Thank goodness the morning nausea has gone (except fort the day of the Tensho seminar 🤷‍♂️), but I still wake up with chronic fatigue, meaning that even my morning wash and dressing has to be done in stages with rests between each stage, followed by a rest with coffee and toast before I can train. Tai Chi opens my spine, deep front line and through the connection, all the joints and myofascia. Despite the underlying fatigue and pain from the surgeries, amputation, cancer treatment and chronic arthritis in all of my body, the training makes … Continue reading Do I Want My Youth Back?

How To Cope With Sickness & Anxiety

Youth is mostly filled with arrogance, narcissism and blindness to the fact that we’re actually alive. We assume that we’re the centre of the universe and are fully and subjectively consumed by our emotions and thoughts we are our anger, fear and hubris. The tempering of this is often when we have children and have to put someone else’s needs in front of our own. The centre of our universe shifts. Then comes illness, where in the beginning we are always going to recover, young people post memes like ‘it will get better’, ‘tomorrow will be a better day’ and … Continue reading How To Cope With Sickness & Anxiety

Don’t Kill Someone With Depression

The problem with ’copy and paste’ and ‘meme’ oriented social media is that people thinking they’re doing good can end up causing more harm. When they (in all good spirit) encourage people with depression to ‘speak out’, ‘talk to someone’ and ask ‘if they’re okay’ can exacerbate the depression if the depressed person feels: That if they do speak up they’ll make the situation worse by agitating or scaring those around them and end up withdrawing and isolating themselves. They feel a lesser person by letting others know and will be passively bullied by them trying to help or sort … Continue reading Don’t Kill Someone With Depression

Look To The Old to Understand The New

温故 (On-ko) is to ask old things. 知新 (Chi-shin) is to know new things. This is really interesting, the idea or principle of learning should be properly understood and permeate everything in our lives and particularly our martial arts. We are often guided toward modern business and spiritual gurus wasting a lot of time and money, not really understanding that there’s nothing ‘new’ in the universe and that truth stands for all time in all things. If we know how to look, the roots are deep and worth researching. For me, ‘truth’ in the way the world works, the underlying … Continue reading Look To The Old to Understand The New