What does it mean to be awake?  Is it awareness of what’s going on around us?  Is it accepting things as they are?  Is it simply not dreaming, but being fully present?  How does one stay awake when the urge to sleep (or at least nap) is so strong?

As practitioners of 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.", we are constantly honing our awareness, trying to sharpen our skills, and awaken ourselves.  Our training is full of opportunities to increase our awareness, by stealing from senseiTeacher; anyone who gives guidance along the way; literally "born before" and by interactions with our practice partners.  I know of many things that I’d like to do better.  But even with conscious intent, sometimes the simplest change, like remembering not to duck, can escape me.  Or maybe I actually succeed in changing, but then my mind wanders to something else I’m doing wrong, and pretty soon I’m ducking again.

As if the struggle to change ourselves isn’t hard enough, don’t we all sometimes feel that our practice partners are thwarting our learning?  E.g., If this guy weren’t so $&%* stiff, I could execute the technique perfectly.  How am I supposed to learn if my uke"Receiver"; the person providing the attack and falling falls before I’ve even done the technique?  Why can’t this know-it-all give me a chance to try it before correcting me?  Why does he throw me as if I’m the Incredible Hulk?  Can’t he see that I’m half his size?  Oh my god, I can’t believe he hit me on the head with his bokkenWooden sword again!

How can anyone not be justified in being annoyed?  How are we supposed to learn in these conditions?  At times, our fellow aikidokaOne who does Aikido can be extremely exasperating, so how do we stay awake and not just tune out?  How do we resist the urge to blame our partner and just pray for sensei to clap?  To be sure, sometimes my partner could do better, and sometimes I am in a position to help him or her improve.  But isn’t it also possible that my partner is just reacting to something I’m doing?  Maybe I’m being stiff or maybe I’m yanking on my uke or maybe I’m being ornery (no, not me!!!), and he’s simply trying to deal with it.

Or perhaps he really is just clumsy & unaware, and we feel vindicated when others complain about the same problem.  After all, if Joe Aikido consistently smacks everyone else’s fingers with the jyo, then it can’t be my fault!

Maybe so.

Or…maybe one of us needs to wake up and figure out how to behave differently.

Whatever the case, how I respond is my choice – I can prefer to believe that there’s nothing I can do, or I can awaken to the gift in it.  What could I do differently that would result in a better outcome?  Blaming my partner is easy, but it doesn’t cause me to take a hard look at myself or force me to consider how I could change.  Since one of the main reasons I practice aikido is to improve myself, finding fault in others when something goes wrong doesn’t make sense, nor does it make me any better.

Just as with aikido, the rest of our lives are also filled with challenges – blabber mouths, drivers who cut you off, liars, cheaters, incompetent bosses, dim-witted co-workers, Republicans…  It’s so easy to be superior and think how stupid they all are and how much better the world would be if they would just get a clue.

I was recently laid off from my job.  Although I wasn’t devastated, I was worried about how I was going to pay my bills, I was angry that my hard work was not better appreciated, and I felt sad about having to leave behind my valued colleagues.  I fantasized about what life would be like if I were in charge or how things would be different if we had never merged with that other company.  I blamed my CEO for mismanaging the business and I blamed George Bush for his disastrous policies.  But daydreaming didn’t make me feel better, and more importantly, it didn’t change the fact that I was out of a job.  It really brought home the point that it’s futile to fight against what already is.

So then I started to think about how I hadn’t been happy in my job for the last two years.  I had made genuine efforts to make it work; I sought opportunities to make changes, but none of it really changed anything.  Overall though, I was pretty comfortable – I made a decent salary, I was good at my work, I enjoyed most of my co-workers, my commute was reasonable, and I didn’t have to travel that much.  In essence, I was in a malaise – my job had its share of issues, but I had grown comfortable with the pain that I knew.

An old proverb says that if a frog is thrown in boiling water, it will jump out.  But if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it does not jump out and slowly boils to death.  I was too sleepy to jump out of the boiling water, and if I hadn’t been laid off, it’s conceivable that I could’ve spent several more unhappy years biding my time.  When I looked at it from this perspective, I realized what a tremendous gift I had been given – a chance to make a fresh start.  I was fortunate to have a wake-up call forced upon me.
Sensei always tells us to look for the gift in an injury.  This may seem like an oxymoron – what good come out of an injury?  It depends on how you look at it.

Losing a job is not good or bad. Having a rough nage"Thrower"; defender; the person applying a technique, a clumsy uke, or an unaware practice partner is not good or bad.

It just IS.

Wake up or stay asleep – it’s your choice.