What do you do

...when you have a chance of realizing a former dream, but you're too busy trying to live your life, now?

For a while I wanted to learn kung fu.  Like, super-learn it and have it permeate the fabric of my everyday life.  Like Wong Fe-hong stuff.  If a cup fell off a table, I'd catch it without thinking kind-of-thing.  And I was lucky enough to have some teachers willing to teach me, for free.  I did my best to learn what they had to teach, but in the end, I just felt like it was exercise.  Occasionally, I might get this glimmer of a feeling that my body had a potential to achieve the grace of movement and composure I had only imagined and seen in movies; but I thought about it too much and my movements remained coarse and approximate, and it all was just exercise in the end.

Yesterday I attended a Bagua Quan class at Jiang Kai-shek Memorial.  I had seen them practicing whenever I attended kickboxing class (definitely more exercise) and I noticed that their movements were like what I dreamed of: efficient, graceful, composed.  The class was how good traditional kung fu classes have been described to me: no belts, just practice, and at a slow pace.  The students moved with precision, having completely mastered each movement before learning the next one.  I learned how to make circles with my hands.

I have confidence that anyone who is willing to learn diligently from this teacher will learn very well.  Just watching him demonstrate moves is like viewing art: in order to describe it, inspires metaphors.  He wasn't quick or powerful; he was water, he was a whip.  He was a really nice guy, but discerning.  He knew I went to kickboxing.  "Don't you get enough exercise?" he asked.

His classes are four days a week.  They cost 4000 NT (120 USD) a month.  I cannot afford that much time in a month.  And if I don't go to all the classes, he won't feel like he can teach me, and the money is wasted on me trying to learn and relearn the same thing.  When I was in Beijing, I payed for a week of classes on Yi-quan, where I learned how to stand in different positions and feel Qi.  I only remember one now.

But for all my rationalizations and excuses, I am just afraid of committing and possibly abandoning a lifestyle I have already constructed.  There are schedules, applications, people to attend to.  Today I went shopping with my cousin instead of my second Bagua class.

I could have told my cousin I didn't want to go shopping with him and left him at my grandfather's house where we had had dinner, to go to class.  I don't even like walking around looking at expensive stuff you could dream of buying.  But he's a nice guy.

The students of the class never talked to me unless the teacher told them to.  They looked right past me, never acknowledging me, even when class was over.  I thought they were stuck-up assholes.  But then again, I never liked talking when I was practicing.  I wanted to concentrate.  I could be like this.  I could leave my cousin who is excited we are going to play Red Alert 2 and aloofly practice kung fu.  But I would lose something else.

The one thing I learned from ANTH 146: Moral Consciousness was that being human means a series of choices that are each a sacrifice.  There is no right answer, only constant sacrifice.

This may sound a little heavy for thinking about whether or not to take a kung fu class, but I think this dilemma is part of a larger problem.  I am unwilling to sacrifice.  I want the good parts of both sides.  This is why I switched my major every semester.  This is why I can't figure out what to do with my life.  There is always something I don't want to let go of, and so I can't sacrifice.  I am thus stuck in between.

Sorry if you read this entire thing.  I'll go back to posting pictures and blurbs soon.