driving + akido

After some time, I realized that I should keep track of what I do during my driving lessons so as to learn from the mistakes and not make it the next time. Just went for my beloved driving lessons and it’s quite smooth except the fact the I stopped after the white line into a yellow box when the light turns yellow. I’m not sure why did I do that, maybe it’s due to the fact that I misjudged the location of the white line as it is a T junction and the white line a far behind. My instructor also reprimanded me for not letting go of the accelerator when I’m changing gear and lastly, he said my U turning is not the perfect state. As you can see, I’m still not a safe driver but I’m enjoying my driving lessons. Sometimes I wonder whether I should go to the arcade to race some cars. Just for fun as driving on the road seems too serious some times and I need to put in 100% of concentration, tiring me out. 
 
Went for a session of akido where I’m just there to look and observe. Have been wondering whether I should join this martial arts where attack is not even important. There are actually 3 groups training but I figured out that I should look at the most elementary as the others are too complicating for my eyes. I was concentrating but the energy that is left in me is just too low for me to see the smooth movements executed. Thus there’s this couple that just joined the group and are starting to learn to rolling forward and backward. Seems easy when the sensei(teacher) executed the move but when the students tried to roll, you can see them rolling all over the place. Then the sensei told them, “focus your eyes towards the front because when you do so, you will be able to move in a straight line.” Of course the students followed the instructions and they stopped rolling all over the place which is kind of miraculous. Thus I was thinking, “when you are focus at one point, you should be able to achieve it in the end.” Therefore it led me to the philosophy of life one way or the other.
 
Next came the rolling backward movement, the sensei explained the positioning of the body and executed it in a slow motion. The students followed and the male student made it. However, the female student just can’t roll over even after a few tries. The male student was rolling in a straight line through the mat and seems happy with his capability to roll backwards whereby the female student is still struggling. After a while, the sensei came over and demonstrated how to do it again and pointed out that the female student is not focusing enough. Maybe I should explain why. To execute this move, the person has to tilt her head opposite to the shoulder that’s going to touch the ground first thus not spraining her head in the process and using her leg to push herself so as to create a momentum. However, when the female is executing the movement, her head turned to the back (maybe it’s out of fear) and the result is failure. I think that many people will also do the some thing as the female including  me as I fear that I would sprain my back and wanted to ensure everything is well in the process(if I have done so) and it seems hard to actually push her leg given the position they are in at that point of time. The female got frustrated and kind of give up and the male partner came out and helped her by explaining the whole process again. It actually helped her and she succeeded once. I also felt happy for her as I can see she’s trying very hard. Thus they went on with the next movement.
 
The next movement is the “walking on knees movement”. Due to the fact that I don’t know Japanese, thus the name sounds a bit weird. Haha…. so the sensei go on explaining how to do it and the students also done it in a relatively short period of time. I heard that it is easy to execute the movement when going forward but not when you want to move in different directions. But the sensei did it like it seems like nothing. I believe that’s why he’s the sensei. Haha…. it went on to positioning of the standing posture and grabbing the opponents hand with one movement. It’s relatively easy and they were practicing it until the end of the lesson. For the other groups, they are practicing the same movement for two whole hours. In spite of that, I still don’t really know what are they doing. Was concentrating on the elementary class as you can see. So yea, that’s all for the 2 hours I spent there watching.
 
At that point, I was thinking that I am definitely going to take a long time to learn as I have to admit that I am a slow learner and therefore the sensei will be crying trying to teach me. I’m really not confident after seeing the many details that I required executing a move. Although I was told that it’s a matter of practice, I’m going to be totally dead but I guess it’s good when you want to train your focusing and be a more gracious person towards the society. so I will continue pondering about whether I want to join. Should I become a gracious being on earth?
 
There’s a lot of details that I have not specified as I am feeling a little groggy due to the draining of energy when I was concentrating on my driving and it’s also partially due to the fact that I’m lazy.
 
Going to take a nap soon.
 
Cheers!