If there is anything anyone can learn from Aikido or any martial arts, it will be the virtue of patience. It can be an on the mat patience, or it can be a lifetime of waiting. Holding on, acting on the right moment takes practice, discipline and a knack of getting the groove of things.

Patience determines Punctuality

While we would like to be punctual all the time as a form of respect to those who waited for us. Important events requires us to turn up on time as it is considered rude in most cultures to be late. The famed Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi displayed excellent tactical use and abuse of patience to win duels. He would frequently turn up late to irritate his opponents and disrupt their psyche. There are also times he would turn up very early just to surprise his enemies, cutting them down before they have time to settle down and prepare for the fight.

So while in our peaceful time, most people respects being punctual and we try often to do that, on a very transactional sense, we need to have a good sense to hold our tongue and not speak too soon. Or sometimes, we need to jump the conversation and seize the topic so that we can get an edge over the negotiation.

Outwaiting the belligerent

This happened to my friend who was a part-time lecture with one of the universities, during his tenure, there was a change in Head of Department (HOD), and unfortunately this new HOD was a kind of loggerhead with my friend, and of course, the new HOD made parts of my friend’s life difficult in the campus, and he got his classes cut down by more than half.

There was nothing my friend could do, but to ’embrace the suck’, and carry on. This goes on for a few years before the HOD was left, and the current faculty members welcomed by friend back to teaching. It turned out that the HOD was also making things difficult for many of faculty members.

We both agreed on hindsight that we owe partly to our martial arts training to wait out the unbearable. He was a old school bare-knuckles type of karateka and he has suffered fair share of injuries and indignity of collapse, so enduring this overbearing HOD was something that has to be done with stoicism.

Patience is Timing

On the mat, Harry sensei has always emphasized on making complete turns, go the full circle. He really took his time to show us, properly how a technique is done. When he does his technique, I find it difficult to resist him, and you will go along with his arc and trajectory.

Going the full circle on the mat, means that his technique are very clean and often graceful. He is able to properly displace a larger, stronger and younger uke by taking his time to do the technique properly. There is no rush, nor short-cuts. He hates short-cuts.

Our younger selves can’t help it, as we lack the temper of age to understand timing properly. We are not able to arrest our fears and trepidation when we face our opponents, we fast forward to execute our techniques quickly and go for the ‘kill shot’.

We often forgot that the entire waza (技) is a journey, it is a means to an end. Our impatient selves put the cart before the horse and see it as an end to a means. So we rush through the whole technique to come to the throw. Without being patient, and properly draw the uke out in a full arc, without making sure our turns are circular, we turn a very graceful Aikido technique into a shallow movement, filled with linear and weak positioning. Of course the throw will be spectacular, but who are we kidding?