Some people talk about knowing, the moment they walk in the door and see the first throw, that AikidoThe word "Aikido" is made up of three japanese characters: ai - harmony, ki - spirit, mind, or universal energy, do - the way. Thus Aikido is "the way of harmony with universal energy." is for them.

Some people realize after months, or years, that this is a permanent fixture in their lives. There is a certain point where it crosses the line from something you do to something you are. AikidoThe word "Aikido" is made up of three japanese characters: ai - harmony, ki - spirit, mind, or universal energy, do - the way. Thus Aikido is "the way of harmony with universal energy." and I did not fall in love at first sight, but now it seems that I’m constantly realizing how much it means to me. The moments sneak up on me quietly, and they hit me hard.

I don’t remember the exact moment I figured it out first, but it was probably somewhere within the summer between fourth and fifth grades. Toward the end of that summer, my exasperated parents restricted me to five classes a week. I was furious. I had been averaging eleven hours of training every week and I was irritated at the presumption that my mother had something better to do than chauffeur me to noon class. I could not think of anything else I would rather be doing than Aikido.

During the school year, especially when I started cross country and track a few years later, training was more difficult to fit into our schedules, but my dad and I worked hard to keep making it to the dojoPlace of the way; a place for strengthening and refinement body, mind and spirit; training hall a few times a week. The seventh-grade track season was the first inkling I had that Aikido was filtering into all aspects of my life. I tripped going over a hurdle in practice. I was the third hurdler to fall that season; one girl had badly scraped up the entire left side of her body and the other got an impressive scar from the damage to her knee. I instinctively rolled when I felt myself falling. My wounds consisted of a small piece of stone embedded in my hand — from slapping the gravel as I went down. 

We are lucky in that our family scheduling has more or less grown to revolve around training, but it doesn’t always work out. One winter, we had a few bad weeks where everyone’s schedules collided and we barely made it to the dojo at all. The more classes in a row I missed, the less motivated I felt to go back; and when I didn’t go to the dojo, I couldn’t motivate myself to do anything at all. I promised myself that as soon as I stopped feeling empty and purposeless, I would go back. After a few months of promises, it finally occurred to me that Aikido might be what I needed. So I went back. Without my dad going anyway, I don’t think it would have been possible, but as it was, it was easy to make it a priority again.

I went to Aikido even when it was the last thing I felt like doing. It was the best decision I ever made again. To make our new website more personal and member-centered, Michael had been patrolling the dojo with a video camera for two weeks asking for interviews. We watched everyone’s interviews at the “launch party” for the website. I hated mine. I cringed watching it. I hadn’t realized how hard it was for me to talk about Aikido; I think I actually got choked up while I was talking, but that wasn’t the problem. The video didn’t com¬municate anything that I had wanted to communicate. I had struggled for words and come up with the wrong ones, and it mattered that the words be exactly right because Aikido was the most important thing. No one else saw a problem, but my video ended up not being included on the final version of the website anyway.

That fall I started high school, where I had to explain to five hundred new people about Aikido. People stop listening after you say “martial art,” as evidenced when one teacher suggested brightly that I do a demonstration for extra credit during a unit on Japan. I explained that Aikido was not the greatest of spectator martial arts, but everyone was excited to miss class, so we dragged some wrestling mats out to the lobby and I decided to roll around for half an hour. I thought it was going to be a disaster. The week before a senseiTeacher; anyone who gives guidance along the way; literally "born before" from a different, even more obscure martial art, had come to talk to us about the samurai and show us videos of how to break limbs in horrible ways. His martial art was much more ostentatious than Aikido, and I was the only one who had really enjoyed the presentation.

I misjudged my classmates. I threw myself into it, committed myself, and from the first moment I could tell everyone could feel it. The semicircle of ninth graders was completely, respectfully silent. It was magic. I was rolling on wrestling mats, in the high school lobby, in my sock feet; I was focused like a laser. I’m sure I did some talking, explaining what I was doing while I rolled forwards and backwards, breakfalls, irimiFront technique, entering, moving into and through the line of attack tenkanTurning, but I don’t remember what I said.

The silence is what sticks with me. It wasn’t until I had put my shoes back on and dragged the mats back to the gym and we were regrouped in the classroom waiting for the bell to ring that I realized. I had wanted so badly to communicate how much Aikido means to me, but the words I chose were disappointing. With that demonstration, I finally managed to make myself understood. I had shown clearly that Aikido was my path in life to the group of people that were least likely to ever understand.

Maybe I don’t need to get the words perfect. May be it’s enough that I make it to the dojo and work on perfecting myself. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about it in a way I think is eloquent enough, but at the moment all I need to say is that Aikido means a lot to me. Anything deeper, I can communicate on the mat.