29.joyful

 I am joyful.

At the end of tonight class we were asked to reflect and check if we thought kung fu was fun. I immediately mentally scoffed and thought "of course!" but I wanted to try and search a littler deeper. I was having kinda of a rotten afternoon, but as soon as I walked into the Kwoon I felt instantly better, (and I'm not just saying that because of the AC 😉). All the stretching we did, all the combinations we got to throw, doing forms, and working on our side heel thrust kicks, I had a blast doing it all! And then I started to think back on previous classes. Throwing back kicks for half the class, yeah my legs were sore, but we haven't worked on them in ages so it felt good to dust them off a bit! Getting to practice with the dragon some more, getting a chance to try out the head; intimidating and tiring, but so much fun! Going back to when we were practicing lion dancing, I learned so much and I always have a great time trying to think of small things I can add to make the lion come to life, as well as practicing the more foundational stuff. Going back further and further in my memory there isn't a single class that comes to mind that I haven't come out of thinking "what an amazing class that was, I had so much fun tonight" and what sihing said tonight really brought that fact into focus for me. (another great example of "pshssh yeah of course I knew that before, but now I actually know it")

Another instance of shining a spotlight onto this fact came when sifu Brinker was recently discussing mastery saying there is no finish line, there is no point in time when you will wake up and say "I'm finished" mastery is an journey without end. I was thinking about how strange it would be if we lived in a world where there was an endpoint to mastery, and I immediately felt a wave of gratitude that kung fu is limitless because the though of one day waking up and hearing "that's it, there's nothing more, you can stop now" made me incredibly sad. Which ended up being quite a revelation to me because at the beginning of the year the list of requirements seemed very daunting, and hearing things like "you need to do kung fu every day" and "it doesn't stop after blackbelt, you need to weave this into the rest of your life" sounded exhausting, but now I'm seeing it in a completely different light because I am actually consciously recognizing the joy that kung fu gives me. 

Kayley Burke