Martial Arts and the Idea of Self

  I recently quit my job, and moved to Nashville, TN with no job prospect.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I'll find one now that I'm here.  This is something my family wanted to do for three years, so we finally just did it.  On the last day of my work I felt really upset in a sad way.  I know I'll keep in contact with co-workers that I'm friends with, so that wasn't the cause of my upsetness.  It took me a while of inward looking to figure it out.  Because I had worked at that school for 11 years, it was part of my self image.  I was leaving my dojo that I'd been at for more than 13 years.  I was loosing that part of my self image.  I was loosing parts of myself that I had been working hard to establish who I am.

Replace "Soccer Team" with Martial Arts

  This can be a good thing.  I now have the opportunity to re-invent my self.  I have many options open to me and my martial art.  I can study a new system of aikido or jujutsu like I had been studying, or I can study something completely new.  I've been interested in some of the Chinese arts like Taiji or Bagua recently.  Or I could even establish my own dojo in Chendokan Aikido.  I've been teaching long enough that I know I can do that part of it.  And that's the job of martial arts in a general sense: to tear down your self image, and rebuild it as you see fit.  So I guess I'm just doing what martial arts has taught me to do in the first place.  I'll have to work on rebuilding my self image.