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Still haven't told Sensei about my decsion not to grade anymore. There's still part of me that really would like to get 1st kyu and Shodan etc. I find I keep finding excuses to retake 1st kyu and none of them are anything but ego.
On one hand it's gotten to be quite easy to go there and fail. Thinking back I was exceptionally calm all the way through the grading and not massively disapointed afterwards. I could go there and fail ten more times and each time it would affect me less and less. Yes I would rather pass than fail but really I don't know why, I don't know if passing would mean anything to me other than the whole episode would be over but then I can do that by simply refusing to grade. Either way I can't claim that it's too emotionally difficult, although I am starting to feel slightly humiliated. Tommorrow will be the third dojo christmas meal I'll attend after having failed a 1st kyu grading and I'm already slightly dreading talking about another failure.
I suppose I don't like the idea of people who are now junior to me becoming senior in rank though but then oddly I quite like the idea of challenging myself to accept that and just get on with my training. It sounds hard and thus quite worthwhile. I'm not sure I like the idea of everyone else getting their hard work acknowledged through "promotion" and me not. Twenty years from now they could be respected teachers, fukushidoin or shidoin, invited to courses and what not and I'd be some random 2nd kyu.
Then again the rebel in me kinda likes that senario, it elicits that cocky part of my nature.
I have a friend who's a jujutsu instructor and we sat down with a bottle of sailor jerry rum and a rather generous quantity of ginger ale and had a good chat and one thing he said stuck in my mind:
"What do you need first kyu for? What are you going to do with it? What's it for?" It's so that I can teach, it's so that Sensei can push forward his plans for the dojo and so the association has one more qualified person that can assume responsibility i.e it's a way of distracting me from just practicing.
12-10-2009 11:32 AM 