A DIFFERENT KIND OF PLATEAU

 In 2004, in a column for aikiweb on Aikido and spirituality, I wrote:

Painting is how I mediate the world, the process by which I integrate my experience of receiving the world into myself. Aikido is how I connect with the world, the process by which I learn to be a human being with other human beings. 

Seven years later I find myself wondering if I'll ever get near where I want to be, not just technically on the mat, but the learning to be a human being part. 

When I was a child I trusted books and I trusted animals. Humans, whether other kids or adults, were a mystery to me. I certainly couldn't articulate it back then, but truly how they thought, why they acted or spoke as they did, what motivated them...none of it made much sense. The quintessential nerdy little girl, I was the outsider who silently observed, asking no questions, just watching and trying to learn. 

Over the years the basic social skills developed so in my teens I had a circle of like-minded friends (the misfit artists and antiwar activists). But to this day I am only really comfortable either in very quiet one to one conversations or in situations where there is a very clear role to play (whether it is task-specific, like collecting tickets at the door to an event, performance, like a political action, or professional, like being a nurse). Faced with a group, even of people I know, when there is no specific role to play or project for us to work on I vacillate between the extremes of hanging back as a silent observer, interjecting myself awkwardly and hoping for the best, or getting flustered and babbling. 

One thing I love about aikido is that when I let it, it is the closest I can get with human beings to the interactions I have with critters: with open eyes, mind and heart, enjoying a physical and movement based connection. But still, when the training is over and we bow out, some days it just feels like I'm back to square one, the awkward and inappropriate outsider. There are training plateaus in aikido that can be prolonged and frustrating...I guess sometimes they happen in life itself, too.....