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I've had a few moments of challenge lately which inspire me to reasses my idea of theory versus practice. In the lightest sense we are all...or at least many of us are in the habit of attempting to act in a harmonious manner with our fellow aikidoka and posasibly our fellow human beings. I feel like I practice this but have come across a few people who are pushing the edge of my harmonious capabilities. One of whom tends to hold people hostage with his pontifications even to the extent of making himself and his captive late for class, for the sake of what seems to me to be pointless blather. How do I blend with this? How do I politely cut him off and say 'you need to train now' and at the same time make it an awase instead an irimi. I understand that irimi sometimes is applicable, but sometimes it's a shortcut.
In a more serious example, I've had a few friends who have trained in aikido for years and never been in an altercation, but recently it seems that a few have had this come to pass. One friend stepped in to a bar fight that he wasn't invloved in with the plan of stopping it. Rather than attempting to cool it down he met physical assertion with physical assertion, without even knowing what was going on. Philosophically, it seems to be outside his repetoire of actions, yet he chose that path.
Many of us are not exposed to extremes, possibly even those which are beyond a mere bar fight, but we still hold these tennets of nonviolence aloft as the only option. Truly, if a relative, a friend, or even (I am a bit embarrassed to say) my dog were in peril I am not sure if I would be thoroughly aiki. Could this be my confidence in aikido? No, I think it is more about emotional knee jerk, which though I have been in extremes before and not lost the moral high ground, I can't say that I can overcome every situation.
03-27-2004 03:14 PM 