Category: Ramblings

Fuck this shit, i feel rejected

Today i feel rejected. This feeling is frustrating. Nobody wronged me in the slightest. Nobody was mean to me. Nobody lied to me. Nobody promised me anything. And still i feel rejected.

And I feel lonely. I am have to do with so many people every day, but i feel lonely. Talking to people, i mean really to talk to people is hard for me. Because I fear of opening myself up. I fear that people will think that i am stupid, that i am weird, that i am ugly.

Maybe this is the reason i myself reject people in my everyday life so much. Maybe they feel rejected by me and now Karma is coming back to me.

I don’t feel everyday this way. Yesterday for example was lovely.

But fuck today, i feel rejected

Love

Love… a four letter word that is difficult to describe. We ask ourselves since ages ago, what is love?

This question isn’t easy to answer. Because love is always different from person to person. It starts with affection and wishing someone well and it can develop into a madness and obsession driving someone crazy. Especially in romantic Love or Eros. But maybe this extreme forms aren’t really love. They are just poisens disguised as Love.

The old Greeks knew many kind of different forms of love. The best know would be Eros, Agape and Philia. Eros is the bodily form of love. The desire we have for our romantic partner and our wish to be together with them.

Philia is the platonic love between friends and family. It’s the form of love were we are going out of our way for friends and family because we share special bonds with them.

And then there is Agape, sometimes also called Caritas. The highest Form of love. Agape is that what God feels for us. And it is this pure form of love that is very difficult for Humans to archieve. Some Theologians would say that Humans since the original Sin are barely able to manifest this form of love, and every other kind of love is only a cheap try to imidate it. But in the end it is only positive descrimination. So when Jesus is telling his followers “Love thy neighbour like yourself”, that isn’t a nice sounding fortune cookie line. It is a brutal command to change your entire Being.

Well … but whatever right?

But maybe if shouldn’t look at love like a feeling. Maybe it is more of a process.

If you tell somebody: “I love you”, it means: I decide to suffer for you. I hope you are worth it.

Maybe that is the meaning of love. It’s taking suffering onto yourself for other people or because of other people. And enduring it, because it is worth it and it has meaning.

My father is a great Man in this regard. He is always there for his family. Since I can remember he always took care of me as best as he could. He also took care of his Lover and his Lovers Children raising them together. This was never easy. But he did it anyway. Because in his eyes it was the right thing to do. He is my Idol in this regard.

There is this Song that is well known. “What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more…”. So in the end it should be clear that there is no love without pain.

When you are together with another person it is easy to hurt them. We hurt each other even if we don’t intend to. One wrong Word, one sharp look can shatter our heart. If we are in love our Hearts become sugar glass for the the other person.

On the other Hand, sometimes love isn’t working out. And that’s okay too. Sometimes realizing that and to cut things of can be a sign of the love that was lost and of lingering affection and respect.

And people love anyway, even if there is pain. Because it is the pain that give love it’s value.

No Wonder then that the rose is the flower of love.

Beauty

Original Posted on the 20.09.2019 on my Instagram-Story. Also, newly edited now

Beauty is that which is moving the heart. And I mean true Beauty. As in something you think of devine, something sacred to you.

It is the highest pinacle of meaning. It can move you to tears. Fill you with love and desire. It can give you happiness and solace.

But… it is also scary. It can strike the greatest fear into your heart. It makes you aware of all your inperfection and everything you could be, and are not. But, you could be…

Most of the time it is a back of mixed feelings. While you can’t comprehend what you feel exactly.

What means tradition in traditional martial arts?

There is budo and there is traditional budo. What is the difference? Traditional budo dojo often say they do their stuff “old school” or they teach the old methods and try to upheld the old “original” values of their martial art. Through that they effectively try to say: “we’re doing the real original stuff! Everybody else is doing the watered down modern sport version!”

So we have to note that traditional is a modern marketing buzzword for the most part today. But as there are real living old traditions or koryu the word shouldn’t be useless.

Tradition means: something that developed over generations and was given to you. It doesn’t mean unchanged. But it describes customs that are given over multiple Generations, which if we allow generations to mean “relationship between teacher and student” would mean that of course even modern budo like Judo, Karate and Aikido can be considered traditional. The Japanese equivalent of tradition is dento[伝統] which gets written with the kanji that can be read as: “transmitted relationship”. Furthering the view that we can see it as a sequence of student and teacher relationships.

Martial Arts are taught by teachers. And even the Founders of a Martial Art had teachers of their own. Be it a father or brother who showed them how to use weapons, or an enemy they had defeated and learned through real experience, or a master who taught them an older style of martial arts. So one could say every martial art by definition is a tradition.

So what is the meaning of the word “traditional” in the martial arts now really? Of course i can only give the i consider as true. Which is:

Saying you train in a traditional martial art is a claim of truth. When you make such a claim you should be able to show proof of it. The simplest way should be to know ones own lineage!

For example: I am a student of tenshin shoden katori shinto ryu heiho. Which is a traditional martial arts from the muromachi period of japan. I know my teachers come from the lineage of Sugino Yoshio, who got taught by Shiina Ichizo, who himself got taught by Iizasa Morisada the 18th Successor of the Founder Iizasa Choizai Ienao.

So, if somebody claims to train in a martial art, he should know the basic lineage of his tradition (well or at least you should be in a easy position to look it up). If not, he is using the word like a buzzword or is simply a fraud. Training a traditional martial art, you don’t get to not know the teacher of your teacher.

The Courage to be Disliked – Introduction

The Courage to be Disliked from Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga is a Book I’ve read and it deeply impressed me. It impressed me so much that i want to note down the main points of the book and want to share them.

The “plot” of the book starts with a young man, unsatisfied with his own life, who is visiting a known philosopher. This philosopher claims that:

  • The worls is simple
  • Every human can change
  • Every human can find happiness

The young man can’t except these claims and wants to have a discussion with the philosopher about it. Which he gladly accepts, as he also wants to learn from the young. And so the book goes on in the form of a dialog between the young man and the philosopher.

The young man(YM) can’t accept that the world is simple. A simple world only exists for children. Children know no worries, they have no responsibility’s and don’t have to worry about money. Their parents and society protects them. When the child grows up, it’s world becomes a lot more complicated. There are personal relationships, work and money to be taken care of. In the past humans tried to please the gods and to follow religion. But nowadays religion has lost most of it’s power. People have to think for themselves. This makes the world complicated. There are a lot of contradictions in the world.

The philosopher(P) answers that yeah, what YM says is right. But still the world is simple. It is the human that makes the world complicated. Or more like, it’s the human who sees the world as such an complicated thing. Ones worldview is highly subjective. For example: Water in a fountain keeps relative constantly the temperature of 18° Celsius. But in the summer this is refreshing and in the winter quite warm. But the 18° is a objective fact. That fact doesn’t change. It is the view the humans have on it that changes. In the same way, if the world is complicated, then it’s the human that has to change and start to see the world how it really is. A person needs the bravery to see the world in the way it is. To make that change.

YM goes on to the other thesis. A person can’t change. He knows that, because he himself is unable to change. P says that he can understand that notion. He himself had it in his younger years. At that time he studied the ancient Greek classics. But then he started to study a new philosophy and everything changed for him.

He leads YM into his study and offers him coffee. He says it will be a long night. And in this way the introduction ends.