Impact

I find it amazing how significant of an impact one person's words can have on you.

"I feel blessed to have a friend like you."

It has been a tough week, not bad, just tough. We have them sometimes, it is just how life works. I truly believe, though, that they are a lot of what makes us who we are.

How do you respond when you are told that people are talking behind your back?

A lot of our life comes down to what we are willing to fight for. I have been writing here about passion, standing up for something, the chaos amongst the world and our presence through each aspect of it.

What are you willing to fight for? Do you know? Do you know what you would give up your life for? Or for whom? Would you give your life to save a stranger's? What about a child?


We watched some clips in one of my classes this past week. I was moved deeply by some of the footage I saw. I think that it is one thing to read about or even talk about, on a simple level, something which happened a long time ago. Maybe the story touches us lightly, but something about seeing a black woman walk to school while being followed by the majority of the white people in town, all of who are tormenting her all along the way, does much more than listening to the story through a class lecture. We also saw a man attempting to walk to class who was physically being beaten along the way. And neither fought back. They did not fight back. Not once. Not in the slightest.


I have been in a situation where I quite literally felt like I was fighting for my life. The woman who I was sparring (sparring is a controlled fight. It is an elaborate game of tag. While the possibility of injury is present, the intention for injury should not be. Control is a key element in sparring) a woman who was also a second degree black belt from a different school. She was upset because her contact lens fell out within the first few seconds of the match. I'm not sure if this sparked a temper or if she simply had poor technique and lack of control. Either way, and to make a long story short, she fought me using full contact (hitting me as hard as she possibly could), and the ref chose not to call her on excessive contact. I can take a hit. You don't practice martial arts for several years without learning how to take a hit in a way that minimizes impact. By the end of the match, I had two purple eyes, a black and blue ridge of my nose, and severe damage to my neck. She punched me at the base of the head, right along the first vertebra. This is what we call a vital spot. It is not permitted in sparring (or ever). If you hit it, even without significant force, you will kill the person. I am not sure how I am not dead. And I am not sure how I am walking still today. But what I am sure of is the feeling I had while in the ring. They say that when it comes down to it, your body and brain reaches a point where it must decide between fight or flight. I had chosen fight. But here is what I do not understand: I never hit her even just one time, within the entire match, with uncontrolled force. I was winning the match, hitting her between 3-5 times per her every one hit to me. Yet she left uninjured.


How is it that our body and mind will come to a point where we must choose between fight or flight and yet we skate along somewhere in the middle? When I had paramedics around me and the ref came and asked me if I was done with the match, it probably took me a full minute to respond. In my head I kept repeating over and over again that I just have to finish the match, I just had to get through until they yell "time". It'll be over soon, I just have to get through it. I was in fight mode, but I refuse to hurt the woman who I felt was trying to kill me.


As I watched the man who was hit in the head with a brick, he did not show any emotion on his face. He did not fight back. He did not speak. He showed no visible reaction.

This leads me in two directions: 1) the concept of being in that situation and not returning the hurt and 2) the idea of being in that situation where you desire to purposely cause harm to another being.

I will start with the second.


What does it take to want to kill someone? This is not a concept that I understand. I do believe that there are out-of-this-world possibilities in some instances-- satan is a very real and powerful being. I want to move beyond the concept of murder though, and elements along that line. I want to know what has happened, what has been done for someone to feel so strongly about something like a person who has brown or black skin entering a high school or college with people who have 'white' skin that they feel the need or a deep enough desire to act upon their internal reaction and physically beat that person. I cannot imagine what it is like to beat someone. Do you not see the pain spread across their face? Do you not see the pain radiate throughout their body? Have you not felt pain yourself?

What have we done in our world to show that this is an okay thing to do? How does living through watching situations like this, be it watching slaves being beating as you grew up, your mother or siblings being beaten by someone, whatever the situation might be, make you act out in that manner? I know that there are psychological elements which come into play with this. But what I don't understand is coming unto a situation where you UNDERSTAND what it is like to be beaten or to witness abuse and then turn around, disregarding the turmoil you have experienced, which comes with the understanding, and do that same thing to someone else-- regardless of if you know them or not.

We talk about nature verses nurture and all of these crazy elements in attempts to explain why we are the way we are or how we come to be who we are and the list goes on and on and on and on. Regardless, how does it come to this? This was not a situation where the lives those who were causing the harm were in danger.

And I wonder, what must it be like to do something like throw a brick at another human's head, with the intent to harm, and watch them take the abuse and not fight back? What is it like to see someone simply take the abuse and externally not do a single thing in response?

I know what it is like to not do something in response, but I do not know what it is like to be on the other end.

I can think of instances where I have put myself in positions so that if the possibility of whatever tragic event I see could possibly play out would have its greatest impact on me rather than say the pedestrians who are crossing the street. Perhaps this is part of what leads me to the questions I have been asking here.


I have switched, now, into the first of the two concepts-- being in the situation where another is causing you harm and choosing not to fight back. I do not wish to go into detail, so I will not, but I have been in this situation many times. I understand that my choices through which has made a significant impact on who I am today.

I cannot understand it, but through time and, I believe, practice there comes a point where while someone is verbally stabbing you with a knife or even physically harming you, where you realize and can see, intimately, what is behind their attack. The root to what has brought them to this point. Many times it only has partially to do with you, the one receiving the attack, if at all. There is something within that seeing, the understanding, the somehow intuitively knowing that you are able to not fight back. Or even responding with what they truly need rather than respond to what they are externally showing you.

I suppose this internal, intuitive understanding I am speaking of here could ultimately answer the second concept I have talked about above. Through seeing into them, beyond the hurt that they are causing, there is a somehow understood root of just what it was that brought them there. Or, at the very least, what it is that they need within that moment to help them see beyond the desire to inflict pain upon another.


I tie this back now to the passion, frustration and chaos that I have spoken of in my previous entries. There is no single sever reaction (and I do see it as a reaction) like those that I am speaking of, which happen without the elements that come when we have thoroughly surpassed frustration. The passion that is so deeply seeded within has a great deal to do with the external actions.

With a deep passion, though, also comes a deep need to be understood, valued and through which respected. When these things feel as though they have been violated, great things come as a consequence. I ask, more than anything else, what it is that you do with your desired reaction?

When you know that many people are and have been talking behind your back, how do you react?

You've already expressed who you are, why you are the way you are, and an openness for feedback.

When your passion is placed into jeopardy, or disrespected, it is easy to react-- to want to sling blades of the tongue, or in the situation of the video that we watched, a brick to the black man's head simply for being him.

I do not believe in these things. I have somehow come to understand them, to know that there is something more, internally, happening, but I do not believe in them.

But what I have started this entry with is the concept of how powerful the words from a single person can be. Do you remember the moments when someone shared something with you that you needed more than you realized? Have you ever felt invalidated in who you are or a passion that you have? Think also of what it was like when someone said something which calmed those fears, soothed the pain and reminded you that who you are is what I need.

I thank you for giving that to me.


As difficult as it is to understand the reason, the spark which light the fire, the deeply rooted happenings which have led to hurting another, so it can be equally, yes equally, difficult to share how positively someone has impacted your life, even within one moment. Or how much you care about someone.

I ask you and have all the hope to empower you to share with others how you feel and how they have impacted your life, regularly. It is difficult, but so often too we make their world right again by doing so. And more often than not, we do not have the slightest idea as to how much we helped them, through our sharing how they have helped us. And more than anything else, we never know when we may or may not have the chance to share the things that we have thought but have not spoken with them.

Thank you for what you have done for me. And for any of you who have opened up, thank you for sharing pieces of what I have done for you.