The best Aikidoists have a high tolerance for frustration.
Life is a gaman taikai (我慢大会) or “a test of our patience, perseverance, and self-control.” Stephen Covey said, “While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.” To be able to choose how we respond is born out of our ability to be tolerant with not just people but with all the frustrations that they and life bring us.
Furuya Sensei often quoted his Zen master Bishop Kenko Yamashita as saying, “Nandemo omoidori ni ikanai” (何でも思い通りに行かない) which means “Nothing goes the way you want it to.” To accept this assertion means that we must have a high tolerance for frustration. If we have low frustration tolerance, then everyone and everything and even the smallest of things will disturb us.
In swordsmanship, our opponents are always trying to apply seme (攻め) or “pressure” on us. In Weapons class, when leveling the weapon in the direction of the opponent, Furuya Sensei would often say “press.” He was not actually touching the other person and thus the press or pressure was not actually physical. Seme is almost spiritual and is this total focus of mind and body unification. It is where we focus so hard on our opponent that we attack them with our minds. The focus is so intent that they can feel it even though we are not actually touching them. It is thought that this focused pressure can interrupt the opponent’s concentration and create a momentary opening for us to attack.
In order to not succumb to our opponent’s mental attack, we have to develop a high degree of not only concentration but a high level of frustration tolerance. In psychology, frustration is defined as “a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment.” If frustration is emotional, then we can’t just put up a shield. We have to learn to not just accept the frustration but gain a high degree of tolerance to it. That is why the Bishop’s assertion is so poignant. In order to accept that “nothing goes the way we want it to” we must have either achieved the skill of letting things go or have developed a high degree of tolerance for frustration.
In class, one way we unknowingly develop a high-level tolerance for frustration is by working with a variety of different partners. Most people are physically different and have different body types, heights, and weights. Some have long arms, short legs or an overhead strike that could knockout a bear. Harder to negotiate than the physical is the wide variety of personalities that bring with them wildly different mental and emotional dispositions. Some people are jerks and attack us with reckless abandonment. Others are bossy and don’t work well with others. Most don’t mean to be difficult mentally or physically, it is just that the mat tends to bring out our stuff. Working with all these different types, enables us to develop tolerance for the frustrations that they confront us with. With each frustration traversed, we become more and more tolerant of frustration and thus no one and nothing that they do can get to us.
We cannot control what happens nor what others do, but we can gain the ability to choose how to respond. Training teaches us to have a high degree of tolerance to frustration but it also teaches us to accept and embrace the imperfection in others and especially the imperfections within ourselves.
Today’s goal: Be tolerant - you never truly know what others are going through.
Watch this video about frustration tolerance