油断大敵
Yudan taiteki
Carelessness is our greatest enemy
Nobody really knows what may happen and so a warrior has to always be careful. Long ago, I was working at an antique dealer and an old man took me aside and gave me some unsolicited sagely wisdom. He said, “Wear a hat when you go outside and take care of your teeth.” I was 25 and thought this guy was crazy. Now that I am older, I totally see what he was saying. His admonishment was that it doesn’t tend to be the big things that get us in the end, but rather the little things that we neglect like not brushing our teeth or wearing sunscreen. In Aikido training, it is the same. Each technique has a set of specific steps or rules that every student must follow. When they follow the steps carefully, then they will generally be successful. If we do find ourselves in a bind, it is those same rules that will help us recover and find our way back. Our health follows the same line of thinking. The equation for good health is regular check ups, staying active, eating healthy and not sitting for too long. During this pandemic, it is easy to sit back and become out of shape. Even before the coronavirus, an average of 300,000 people died per year in the US from complications due to inactivity and poor diets. I wonder if that number will increase or decrease as a result of being quarantined. It has been almost nine months since the beginning of the coronavirus. As we all scrambled to hunker down and stay safe, it was easy and understandable that we might have neglected our outer health as well as our inner health. Now as the holidays are upon us and as we creep towards being quarantined for a year, we need to be extra careful about our health to ensure that we don’t create any longer term damage. As the Roman poet, Virgil said, “The greatest wealth is health.” Keep your guards up because bad habits and sedentary lifestyles have a way of sneaking up on us. Carelessness is our greatest enemy.
Today’s goal: Take steps to ensure that you are taking care of your inner and outer health. “There’s no better time than the present.”