The Dynamics of Springing Forward
I am in Toastmasters, and recently stepped in to be Toastmaster for a meeting where the scheduled TM had to cancel. One of the Toastmaster's tasks in preparing to run a meeting is to come up with a theme for the meeting. I looked up some ideas for themes for Spring meetings, and one jumped out at me that I think I also used once before: "Spring Forward".
I am not a normal fan of the Daylight Savings Time springing forward an hour. I love "Fall back" but to me, the symmetry doesn't mean I put up with one well for the glory of the other one (in college, we would figure out things to do in "negative time", leaving at a certain time, but due to falling back an hour, returning before we left--great fun). I'm sure the first time I used "Spring Forward" as a theme, I told a "negative Tommy's run" story.
However, around the time of this meeting, I had just introduced my youngest son to an old movie that I always enjoyed, "Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai" with Forest Whittaker. One thing I really liked about that movie was the samurai leaning, and especially the quotes from Hagakure the book of the Samurai. And it got me thinking of not just the clock aspect of "springing forward", but also the dynamics of it. Not just the turning forward, or stepping forward, but the springing part.
And it reminding me of the various martial arts experience I've had in my life, where the literal spring forward is taught.
- In Aikido, there are several ways to defend against an incoming attack. There is the obvious step back, or step to the side. But I was impressed by the concept of "irimi", which is stepping *forward* and past the attacker; springing forward, if you will.
- In karate (I learned this as a student of shito ryu), there is the idea that there are three levels of initiative against an attack. The first is "sen", where you just attack first. The second is "go no sen", the standard of waiting for the attack, deflecting it, then countering, that is the basic instruction method for lower belts. The third level is "sen no sen", which is timing your own attack at the same time as the incoming attack, essentially, springing forward as you sense that they are attacking, and simultaneously meeting their attack with a deflection and counter!
After thinking of this, and how maybe that's what we should focus on for the spring--an action of springing forward--I ended up getting out my very old, brittle paperback copy of Hagakure to look for a quote, and of course in a book of quotes, I found one, which after sort of going through the above, I also read in the meeting:
When meeting calamities or difficult situations, it is not enough to simply say that one is not at all flustered. When meeting difficult situations, one should dash forward bravely and with joy. It is the crossing of a single barrier and is like the saying "the more the water, the higher the boat"
—Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Wow, so that really brought it all together. So, I'm not really what you'd call a positive person. I am cynical, I tend to worry and also think that things won't work out great, but here I am with this idea of using spring to at least metaphorically tell folks we should try to spring forward, and so I shared that with my Toastmasters Club, and I thought I could share it here, and maybe by writing it down after saying it off of notecards, maybe even *I* can take it to heart; but here it is. This spring, try to spring forward, into your difficult situations, bravely and with joy...