Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it into a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard. Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely — lay your life before him.
It has to be some sort of cosmic Monday rule that I have to be all wishy-washy and irritated. Maybe it's a lunar thing, maybe it's from sleeping on the futon, maybe I had too many drinks on the weekend (four!), but I was all fighty and punchy this morning. It's been a long time since I've really thought about why I like to fight, why I like violence so much, and since I can't find my Hippo-Jutsu notes, I'll just have to sort of improvise this.
I like fighting. I like to hit things. I got a few minutes to whale on my punching bag yesterday (after hearing about a certain nephew who bit my one-year-old daughter) and despite the twinge in my wrist that hasn't gone away, I felt really, really good for about twenty minutes after that. Now, if you Wikiquote "Violence" or "Fighting", all you get are "Fighting is bad! Violence is hate!" quotes, which, on a general, societal level, I agree with. Now there's also the great Heinlein quote of "Naked force has resolved more issues than anything else in history, and thinking anything else is wishful thinking of the worst sort". This is also true... violence sucks, but it works, for a number of reasons.
Now, I don't want to fight another country for any issue of mine or theirs, and I don't want to fight anyone on the street for any issue of mine or theirs... but I want to fight someone else who wants to fight me, for the sake of fighting, so that we can fight, and still be friends, and nothing more. Maybe it's hard-wired into humans, maybe it's something wrong with my brain, but I like to fight, I like to hit things, and I feel no animosity for anyone, because of or in spite of this.
People need to differentiate fighting, differentiate VIOLENCE, with hostility. They are separate things. Fighting is destruction and creation at it's most base level, whereas hostility is a developed, evolved concept that is solely about destruction.
2 comments:
In the book Island, by Aldous Huxley, he says that the best thing a person who feels angry can do is to channel his violence towards something useful, like cutting down a tree. Just a thought, but it might make others feel better about your violence. Yay violence, force for good.
It is through violence that we learn ourselves. Learning to destroy helps us learn how precious the very things we we are destroying are. Via learning how to end life, we learn to appreciate it. We make a Beutiful violence.
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