Badger1777
Green Belt
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2014
- Messages
- 127
- Reaction score
- 58
Just sharing some random musings.
I recently got promoted having successfully graded (not forum belts, real ones
). I'm over the moon that I passed that test, and honoured that I was awarded the next belt, but its slightly ruined my planned musing, which was going to be titled, "why I value (present tense) my white belt"
So here goes.
Right, here's me, a 40 year old dad of two, happily married, living a nice semi-detached suburban gaff with front and rear gardens in the town of my choice. I have everything I set out to get when I was young. I built up the career I wanted, that I love, and over the past 20 odd years have gained enough experience in that career to be very respected, perhaps at the top of my game in my chosen career. At work I have subordinates, and I even have influence over the boss. At home I have a wife and two kids that love me, and outside, I have friends that love and respect me. All this comes at a price of course. Two prices really. When you have everything you really want, you have a lot to lose. Secondly, when you have everything you want, you have nothing new of value to gain. I should point out I'm not talking money, I'm far from loaded, but I have everything I really want.
Except my health. My health decayed over the past 12 months to the extent that some of the tests the doctors were running were, not to put too fine a point on things, to see if I was dying. About 4 months ago this climaxed with me collapsing unconscious in pain, and hearing an alarm sounding and seeing a nurse run to the defibrillator cabinet as I faded out. Then nothing. Not blackness, not silence, just nothing. An instant later (I'm told it was around 45 minutes later) I'm awake again, full of tubes and wires and getting loaded into an ambulance.
The hospital treated the cause of the outage, and here I am. Two weeks after I was released from hospital, severely unfit after months of illness, I joined a martial arts club. I wore a white belt. I stood at the back, and I had to/have to call everybody sir or ma'am. everyone is higher rank than me. I don't get to tell anyone what to do. I get told what to do. I can't advise anyone or tell them that if they do it this way then they might face this challenge further down the line. I am right at the bottom of the pecking order.
So why did I value my white belt so much? Well, quite simply, it represented me claiming me back. In one way, I'd lost sight of me. Its nice when people value your opinion but its equally nice when you have no idea, and someone else has to do the thinking and the knowing. In another way, the physical way, the 'me' was very broken. Nearly dead. And here is me rebuilding me, with the help and support of a lot of people who don't even really know me but know that the very fact I keep turning up means I have a common interest. The white belt represented more than a chunk of bleached cotton, it represents the remanufacture of me.
So there we are, that's why I valued my white belt. And I think even if people didn't nearly die, or are still building their normal life up, the white belt is still a thing to be valued, as it represents not what you are, but what you can be.
I recently got promoted having successfully graded (not forum belts, real ones
). I'm over the moon that I passed that test, and honoured that I was awarded the next belt, but its slightly ruined my planned musing, which was going to be titled, "why I value (present tense) my white belt"So here goes.
Right, here's me, a 40 year old dad of two, happily married, living a nice semi-detached suburban gaff with front and rear gardens in the town of my choice. I have everything I set out to get when I was young. I built up the career I wanted, that I love, and over the past 20 odd years have gained enough experience in that career to be very respected, perhaps at the top of my game in my chosen career. At work I have subordinates, and I even have influence over the boss. At home I have a wife and two kids that love me, and outside, I have friends that love and respect me. All this comes at a price of course. Two prices really. When you have everything you really want, you have a lot to lose. Secondly, when you have everything you want, you have nothing new of value to gain. I should point out I'm not talking money, I'm far from loaded, but I have everything I really want.
Except my health. My health decayed over the past 12 months to the extent that some of the tests the doctors were running were, not to put too fine a point on things, to see if I was dying. About 4 months ago this climaxed with me collapsing unconscious in pain, and hearing an alarm sounding and seeing a nurse run to the defibrillator cabinet as I faded out. Then nothing. Not blackness, not silence, just nothing. An instant later (I'm told it was around 45 minutes later) I'm awake again, full of tubes and wires and getting loaded into an ambulance.
The hospital treated the cause of the outage, and here I am. Two weeks after I was released from hospital, severely unfit after months of illness, I joined a martial arts club. I wore a white belt. I stood at the back, and I had to/have to call everybody sir or ma'am. everyone is higher rank than me. I don't get to tell anyone what to do. I get told what to do. I can't advise anyone or tell them that if they do it this way then they might face this challenge further down the line. I am right at the bottom of the pecking order.
So why did I value my white belt so much? Well, quite simply, it represented me claiming me back. In one way, I'd lost sight of me. Its nice when people value your opinion but its equally nice when you have no idea, and someone else has to do the thinking and the knowing. In another way, the physical way, the 'me' was very broken. Nearly dead. And here is me rebuilding me, with the help and support of a lot of people who don't even really know me but know that the very fact I keep turning up means I have a common interest. The white belt represented more than a chunk of bleached cotton, it represents the remanufacture of me.
So there we are, that's why I valued my white belt. And I think even if people didn't nearly die, or are still building their normal life up, the white belt is still a thing to be valued, as it represents not what you are, but what you can be.
