The Sum Total

Our contender is exhausted and wishing that his trials to make the national team were over already.  My son has strained or torn his glute and can’t jump or kick without pain.  (This is a teenager with a tornado kick that looks like he’s flying, and now he can’t jump without pain!)  Our guan is in serious disrepair.  Some would say there are spots that are a health hazard if not a safety one, but we don’t yet have somewhere else to go.  My second shot into the base of my spine was more painful than the first, but at least tonight, it was working pretty well.  After more than an hour of teaching and another hour or so of personal practice consisting mostly of sweeps, tornado kicks and kicking combinations, I’m able to walk up and down the stairs in my house like a normal person, instead of taking them one at a time.  That’s the sum total of my martial arts experience and concerns this evening, and I have no desire to go into further detail about any of the items above.  I just want to sit with it all, the good and the bad, and be grateful.

I have a high class of problems, if you can even call them that: commuter trains that are never on time and make me late for kung fu classes that I’m supposed to be teaching; authors who are boring, bland and vanilla that I’m ordered to feature on one of my television  shows because they have a big name or they fit a needed political perspective; not having the food in the house that I had no way of knowing I’d be craving after an evening in a leaky school with fantastic young men giving it their all through fatigue and pain. These are today’s problems.  They’re indicative of a full and satisfying life.

I can always worry tomorrow about how long the latest shot will last, if it will in fact eliminate my need for arthritis medication or anti-inflammatories, as I deeply hope it will.  Tomorrow I will continue my prayers for the means to send my currently-injured, kindred martial arts soul to the college of his choice.  I will get through the morning editorial meeting without showing my annoyance at matters above my pay grade that shouldn’t be. Etcetera.

Lastly, I will do all I can to remember and hang on to how it feels right now to be simultaneously happy, miffed, concerned, a touch sad – but somehow, above all, grateful.