‘When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you’.
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you”
For a while I was inert. I wanted to find out more about tai chi, but I did not really want to change… more specifically I wasn’t ready to change, or I was just plain scared to, which was the reality of the situation. I needed to have a good chat with myself.
When I was 7, I went to see my first live football match, taken by my neighbour Norman Cleveland. I name him because he was a really good man. The sort of man when people sing ‘for he’s a jolly good fellow’ etc, people actually meant it.
Norman took me to see Brighton & Hove Albion versus Grimsby Town, on 16th October 1974.
Prior to seeing this match, I was a Chelsea fan. My parents had split up and my new school was full of Chelsea fans, as they had won the FA Cup and followed that with the now defunct Cup Winners Cup. So, to fit in, that is who I supported. I even wrote to the club for a photo and autographs, they duly obliged.
This relationship with the very glamorous Chelsea was very short lived after I caught sight of live football. I did not even know Brighton had a football team, they were 3rd division compared with Chelsea who were 1st division, now Premier League.
It was when I caught my first view of the green of the pitch at the Goldstone, this was when my head began to be turned. Oh my, I almost swooned, the depth of the green, the size of the pitch, the lushness of the colour and there were actual people playing football on it. Men no less, not the small scruffy pitches with 7/8-year-olds all running together in a huge melee after the ball. This was adult. I wanted in. I quite liked the swearing from the 20,000 crowd also.
Once I had got back home after the game, I remember having a conversation with myself about the pros and cons of swapping from Chelsea to Brighton. In all honesty, it was a very short chat. The fact I could go to see Brighton every other week compared with no-one taking me up to London to see Chelsea was a huge plus. Also, Brighton played in blue and white stripes, I mean, for goodness sake, what is there not to like.
A slight digression, and one in which I could shoehorn a story on the Albion, but a digression which illustrates a predilection for having a good chat with myself.
The chat was about how to react to such a tai chi and life crossroads. The choice was to stay as I had always been, a happy go lucky, meandering type of fellow with an attitude on life which meant I dipped in and out of involvement. Out especially if it involved stuff like commitment, learning, that sort of thing. All the sorts of things I should have taken from school or my dad and didn’t. School scarred me. The perfect symbiosis of indolence on my part and pressure on theirs.
I went from doing well, to, well, not doing well!
Then I grew up and still carried on that momentum of indolence with a dash of humour and a good work ethic, which I had inherited from my mother, which much to her annoyance did not manifest itself until I left school. Allied with a perfect late teenage arrogance masking chronic low self-esteem and a tacit thought that at any given moment, my life would come crashing around my ears and I would not know what to do. My, what a concoction!
The artifice was now in place and lasted for the next 19 years as I bumbled my way through life.
You can see how the thought of changing and changing because of something I had only been doing for 3 months or so, was such a huge deal.
This is why it took me two months to understand the situation, and this is where being a late learner has been such a good friend.
I had begun to learn through tai chi and the philosophy of the Tao te Ching (The Book of the Way). All was not lost, there was an alternative to how I was feeling, there was a different me, perhaps, just perhaps, the ‘real’ me was still inside and wanting to get out to explore and see what life has to offer.
This feeling of wanting to be different, to actually like myself and not just be playing a character.
We all have many characters within us, different facets popping out for different occasions. I had hung my hook on one particular facet of my character, a facet we shall call with a suitably grandiose name Ernesto Gaugain-Orvillia.
A weird hybrid of Spanish, French, and made-up nonsense, but certainly a name which represents my EGO beautifully. Don’t forget, this name of great bravado, was just the mask for an enduring lack of confidence.
And carry on is what I obviously resolved to do. Otherwise, I would not be writing this now.
I tried for a little jeopardy of choice…. but it was fairly obvious I had decided to choose the path of ego reduction.
Perhaps the question you may be asking is, how on earth can doing a series of movements reduce your ego?
A good question and one I am unsure whether I can articulate. But of course, I will give it a go, otherwise why waste your time reading on!
Tai chi is not about competition, it’s not about collecting belts to take you through to the next stage, it is simply about your mind and your body. Your body will tell you if you have completed the move correctly, everything will be in harmony. The person you are learning tai chi from will only guide you in each move and tell you how your body looks, but it is your body who will tell you what is right. It will inform your mind because everything will be in perfect alignment.
On a level, this is where the ego reduction begins. The old tai chi adage of the ‘easy is not simple and the simple is not easy’, could not be more appropriate.
What appears to be a simple move can, more often than not, prove to be far from easy. Our ego usually jumps in at this moment and gives his opinion. My ego Ernesto would always get frustrated. This looks so easy, so why, why, why can I not do it……… arrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!
The simple answer, which of course is not easy, is to not think about it, let your body do what it can do. You will fail and fail and fail many times over… and then it happens, your body goes into perfect alignment and almost lights up. You have articulated that move precisely as it should be. The rush of dopamine is huge, and you get excited and think you have cracked it. Then you practise the move again, safe in the knowledge you have succeeded in taming it… and then you fail once more.
I guess this is when you start to look at yourself and think a change might be a good thing. Or you simply quit because it is too hard… and many do.
Tai chi is a hard discipline, but it has a forgiving nature and an innate humility which will, sooner or later, transcend your ego.