Posted By :
liamjtolentino
3 Feb
Equilibrium
Balance. It’s a common lesson I’ve been taught throughout my life, yet only recently I’ve been starting to fit into my life. Some of you know I have been conditioning my body to get back into doing martial arts, and a huge part of my new training involves balance, both figuratively and literally. In the literal sense, I have been training balance by just doing some basic exercises and stretches, mainly hoping to eventually achieve the kind of Taekwondo high kicks I was doing as a kid, but also to understand my body better and bridge that connection between my mind and physical form. Since the last time I did any athletic activity (which was an eternity ago), my body has gone through quite a lot of change, from my weight gain during the pandemic to my strength gain in the previous year of weight lifting. With such physical change, I understood that I needed to change mentally and spiritually as well to make sure all aspects of myself are aligned and balanced. I don’t want to push my body too hard, but at the same time, I want to find consistency again. It’s this balance that I’ve been struggling to maintain, this balance of life. I am in perhaps the busiest year of my life and I need to be able to keep everything in check or else I’ll stumble and fall again like a few years ago.
Let’s talk a bit about that mental and spiritual balance I mentioned. Those of you who have known me a long time might know I have a bit of a past. If you didn’t, that’s good. I wasn’t a criminal or anything like that, but there are parts of me that I wish I could leave behind. The thing about the past is that no matter what you do to erase it, it will always follow you. You can choose to let go, try to burn it, kill it, make it go away, but the past will find some way back to you. It always does. It doesn’t define who you are now, but it does tell everything you did to get there. This is something I have struggled with for many years and still do. Luckily, most people I know see me in a mostly positive light, so most of this struggle is internal, but then how do I extinguish a fire that persistently burns within me? What I’ve learned recently is that I don’t. I should make peace with it. Making peace does not mean it goes away, but rather I find a way to make it not hold me back anymore. It’s like that scene from Mulan (1998) where she uses the weights to wrap around the pole so that instead of weighing her down, they help her go up. That’s how I’m trying to approach all that pain, all that rage, all those negative feelings I tried to hide away for years. I keep it in and let it out when I need it most. I turned it into a weapon, but not in the same way I did before, instead using it to push me through life but at the same time balancing it out with my more positive and peaceful thoughts.
The hardest part about balance is that the scales will tip back and forth a lot before they truly settle. That’s where I’m at right now. I’m at that point where I’m trying to find my center of gravity and I won’t be sure until everything stops tipping back and forth. See, I’m not even sure if my approach to life is that balanced at all. Sometimes you’ll think you found the balance point only for everything to tip one way. That’s okay. We keep trying. This is not a battle I can win through persistence and sheer force of will but with patience. When you block an attack, you don’t just try and push through; you reposition and find a new opening. That’s life. It’s not about pushing myself till I break like I once thought. It’s about knowing when to push and when to hold back. I’ve been trying to incorporate this into my own kinda fighting style using calmness and peaceful thoughts in my defense and the painful thoughts mentioned before to power my strikes. It’s become more of a meditational practice for me than a martial art because I use it to explore my inner turmoil and try to find balance rather than as a self-defense or fighting tool (though that is still part of it lol). Still then, it’s all about trying to tip the scales carefully. Too much rage in a punch may leave me blind to a counterattack, but too little and all that energy would be wasted on a weak attack. Too much tension in a parry can leave me too stiff to reposition, but too little and the opponent’s strike will take me down. It’s all about those choices, and I want to apply them to my everyday life.
This whole thing has mostly been me rambling with no clear direction or thesis, so I’ll try and share how I’m trying to apply these lessons in my own life. More directly, I’ve been both voluntarily and involuntarily using Wing Chun moves to do stuff like opening doors. I don’t have a wooden dummy to practice on, so sometimes I’ll just find myself doing some of the moves I learned years ago (I forgot all the names lol) on random things. More indirectly, I’ve been trying to find balance in the way I approach things in life. I don’t want to be so locked in and hyper-focused to the point that I become blind to everything around me, but at the same time, I don’t want to be so relaxed that I lose track of where I’m going. I’ve learned to take a step back every once in a while to regain my perspective, but I try to make sure I can always return to where I’m meant to be. I’d go on with more examples, but I honestly forgot 💀.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned about balance is that being balanced does not always mean being still. A spinning gyroscope or even a Beyblade can stay upright and balanced by spinning consistently. A juggler on a unicycle can’t stay balanced by staying still at the equilibrium; they have to constantly adjust their position to stay upright. Two people slow-dancing must keep moving with one another to stay balanced and on the beat of the music. See, it’s not always about finding that equilibrium; it’s also about maintaining it. Like with my workout routine I mentioned, I need to keep it consistent even after I’ve achieved the results I want, otherwise I’ll start to regress.
I have honestly lost track of what my main point in all of this was, but I hope for you, my dearest reader, this all meant something to you. Perhaps you may find your own lesson that I missed in all of this.