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Old 11-09-2013, 07:19 AM   #17
OwlMatt
 
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Dojo: Milwaukee Aikikai
Location: Wisconsin
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: I Don't Care That Much

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Yannis Mousoulis wrote: View Post
It's one thing to be doing aikido as a hobby or activity and another thing to be an aikidoist.
You're splitting semantic hairs here based on your own arbitrary judgement. There is no way to define aikidoist except as someone who trains aikido.
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It's pretty obvious that you are not as dedicated as it would take for you to qualify as a true budoka and that is fine if you ask me.
What on earth is a "true budoka"?
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The only person's time you are wasting is yours, no instructor would have his time wasted by someone who doesnt care so much.
Aikido is certainly not a waste of my time. If it was, I wouldn't do it.
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But what i find surprisingly annoying is the fact that you refer to some kind of veil being lifted off martial arts.
You don't have enough dedication to get hit or drive far for your martial art, yet all of a sudden you have a strong opinion about the shortcut to enlightenment, super powers nobility and martial effectiveness just because you read it on the internet or some kind of silly new fashionable trendy sport such as MMA advertises so.
First, what makes you think I came by my opinions "all of a sudden"? Read more of my blog and I think you'll find that's not the case at all. Second, MMA is not any sillier than aikido (which, by the way, many people find very silly), and is not new.
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Martial arts are not a shortcut to enlightenment, they are a huge journey to it. If there was a shortcut, it wouldn't be enlightenment but a mere sunday walk.
Right, just like every other activity that requires time, focus, effort, and sacrifice.
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As for martial effectiveness, let people who really practice have an opinion, whether they agree with me or not, because it takes a lot of hitting, a lot of long drives a lot of weekends without your family and millions more of things that you wouldn't do, as you say, to know what really works in a fight and how to make it work.
The only way "to know what really works in a fight" is to get into fights. Unless you're doing that, or at least learning from someone who has done that, you don't know what really works in a fight, no matter how devoted you are to a particular martial art.
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Aikido training is my number one priority.
Congratulations. My number one priority is being a husband and a father. My number two priority is the music that has been my life's work. I don't have a problem with your priorities being different from mine, so why does it bother you so much that my priorities are different from yours?
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I respect every opinion in this world, but some things sound very insulting to me. I have spent years on the mat doing what i love most and now someone who "doesnt care so much" is claiming to know about the new found truth that exposes martial arts as ineffective, in order to find an excuse for his lack of dedication...
First of all, what you call my "lack of dedication" doesn't need an excuse. The fact that I do not feel the way you feel does not have to be justified. Second, make sure that when you use quotation marks you are actually quoting me. What I said was, "I don't care that much." The word that denotes specificity. I don't care enough, specifically, to go multiple days a week without seeing my wife, to uproot my family, or to be regularly beaten with a stick. Are you suggesting that every aikidoist needs to be willing to do these things?
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You simply added another drop in the vast ocean of ignorant information that people like you love to read and write about instead of walking to blocks down and enter the dojo.
Except I do walk those blocks and I do enter the dojo. I acknowledge all this "ignorant information" and yet am still willing to devote a significant amount of my time to training. I think that suggests that all this "ignorant information" isn't the threat to aikido that you think it is.

Last edited by OwlMatt : 11-09-2013 at 07:22 AM.

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