Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The waiting game

Do you hate waiting? Waiting for your turn in the queue, waiting for the bus to arrive, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for the clothes to dry, waiting for the lift to open its doors while you frantically press the "up" button, waiting for the perfect Tai Ji teacher to appear? Waiting for this paragraph to end?

Personally, I don't like waiting. So sometimes, I do wonder what attracted me to Tai Ji in the first place. As most people i've spoken to relate Tai Ji to slowly waving your hands and moving your legs - they can't wait for it to be over! They'll be thinking "what's for dinner tonight" or "what if I don't finish my work tonight" or "can that person stop coughing?"!!...(click here for more)

Even people who do Tai Ji regularly, when being corrected by a teacher, they can't wait for the instruction to be over because the legs hurt! It gets worse when the teacher is correcting you in front of the class, because you're trying to listen to the explanation, but at the same time trying to maintain composure so as not to crumble under muscle stress!!

So why wait?

One of my teachers gave me the most interesting answer. It's a measure of Gong Fu - i.e. a measure of how much skill you have acquired throughout the years. Execution of a technique takes patience - waiting for the right moment. To be able to wait is to be able to tell your body to hold on that bit longer, to have the will power to tell your muscles that another minute is still ok.

That's my motivation to wait. To be able to tell myself that I can wait that bit longer. To be able to tell myself that my will power is strong. And hopefully one day, to be able to tell the guy on the floor that "I've waited for you for 30 years, that's why i'm still standing and you're on the floor..." ;)

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