A Little Bit Silly

Tonight's class was awesome, not just because we got to listen to sweet jams, and get a bunch of form reps in, but also because it gave me the answer to how I should approach the Mastery requirement that I've been searching for for so long! When sifu Rybak explained that song lyrics are usually easy for us to learn because songs have interesting melodies and catchy choruses, but mostly importantly because we want to learn them, I saw an immediate solution to how I can successfully approach this requirement. 

I know I am a person who likes weird songs, in particular I like the challenge that comes along with trying to learn them. Fast tempos with as many syllables as you can fit into a breath, complicated time signatures, or my favourite, songs with strange subject matter that involve a lot of memorization. I remember finding The Element Song by Tom Lehrer and spending weeks, listening to it at slow playback speeds to learn the lyrics, and then over and over until I could recite it perfectly at full speed. I know a second completely different periodic table song, I know a song that's only spelling, I learned almost all the lyrics to an 8-minute long song in 3 tries as a challenge to myself. I once studied a bands entire discography in 2 weeks in preparation for a concert. I know I am capable of memorizing and maintaining things like this but I've never thought of approaching the Mastery requirement like it's a challenging song I'm trying to learn.

I think what was so valuable to me from tonight's class was understanding that silliness can be an important part of our training. It can prompt us to look at our training in new ways, it can stimulate creativity in our training, it can breathe new life into our training and generate the motivation to train. I am sometimes hesitant to show the less serious side of myself, because I am afraid it will make it seem like I am not taking kung fu seriously, that I am not showing respect or discipline, or that I am making a mockery of a 2000 year old martial art. But tonight's class showed me that finding ways to train, to make progress, to work around roadblocks is taking your training seriously, no matter how un-seriously it looks from the outside. 

(For those curious, The Element Song by Tom Lehrer: https://youtu.be/U2cfju6GTNs)

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