Tag: future

Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here?

I never had such a problem keeping me up at night. All I have to do is to go to the dojo, follow a certain respectable old man do Aikido and go home. Simple.

Now that I am in that shoes and people are following me, there is a certain standards, quality, direction, style, ethos, pedagogy, sub-culture, teaching, curriculum that I have to dish out, someway, somehow, one way or the other.

As my friend Steven always says it “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Ain’t that the truth.

It’s never far from my mind that this position I held is an extremely privileged one, I didn’t put myself there, someone I respect a lot asked me to be there, and now that I am here, the weight is on me to do something, moving forward. My friends in the dojo put their trust in me to take this place forward and I’m burdened constantly not to let them down. The weight of that responsibility is serious shit.

No Easy Day, No Easy Answer

Such is the cruel reality of change, we are all forced to change. Legacy held us in good stead, knowing we came from a respectable past, but how we move forward will determine how we continue to keep that past respectable.

Deep down inside I do still feel like a phony, Harry sensei’s spot is too big to fill, I know that I have no plans to fill it, faintly even trying to do that is will be preposterous. Then the next question begs to be answered, how do I write my own story? Do I even want to see myself 80 years old 7th dan, dedicated to Aikido? Or can I be who I am, 3rd dan, 80 years old, dedicated to Aikido?

In the world of pecking order and sexy new martial arts, I don’t think I can compel many people to follow an old 3rd dan, still running a dojo 10-15 years from now. It’s not a great selling point, I will age (am aging) and will falter, like Harry sensei did, will people still turn up at the dojo out of respect, sympathy or a little bit of both?

So what?

Even if I were to advance in grade, so what? So freaking what?

I still cannot see myself at the epitome of Aikido, like the shoulder of the giant I’m standing on. So should I avoid the risk of desecrating Harry sensei’s legacy by running a sub-par class? Or should I chart my own way, and risk desecrating Harry sensei’s legacy the same? Damn it if you do and Damn it if you don’t.

No help in finding the answer either

Sorry no sorry, I don’t think there is anyone out there who can help me solve this. That’s the other thing that has always been a me problem, the solutions lies only in me, myself and I. Once I found the solution (which will come to me eventually, I just got to be patient) then I can move. Until then I can only hobble along haphazardly, be the stand-in until the stand-in, stood out permanently.

Right now all I can do is to use my imagination and think about how Harry sensei could have done it under the circumstances when he took over Teddy Lee sensei back then more than 50 years ago; the challenges he faced, the acceptance and rejection he has to face, building up Aikido the way he did. The problem is that there are no cookie crumbs, he left no ‘how-to’ guide on how to run a dojo and take the dojo forward; all I got from him was his teaching, as fleeting, unreliable memory in my head, and that’s all. I constantly ask myself how do I go on when all of our interpretations of his teachings differs widely dependent on people’s perceptions.

Not exciting at all

I can’t build any excitement out of this heaviness at all, perhaps I took this role with a very serious responsibility, and maybe I do want to make Harry sensei proud and when people comes to his dojo, they can say that Harry sensei did a good job, his bunch of Aikidokas are a skillful lot. That’s perhaps my lofty goal and I’m not sure if I am up to it to see it happen.

Until I find a way, I think I’m gonna be kept awake more often than I like to.

The General Elections is here…again

The General Elections is here…again

Dear Boys,

We are in the midst of an election season again in Singapore, and I hate elections, other than the one extra day of public holiday we get so that we can go to the polls.

Why the hate?

Its a rather strong choice of words, because that’s what elections does, polarises people. Right now in Singapore as well as around the world, we’re facing a pandemic of unprecedented scale, all hands must be on deck to fight this pandemic, save lives and of course save our country and economy. The COVID19 pandemic puts the entire world at war, and this war is far from over.

So here comes the Elections.

This is really the last thing we need right now, as the current, effective and working government is dissolved so that we can reset and choose a ‘new’ one. We don’t need a new one as the current one is already doing a stellar job, they have all the mechanism in place and everything is working well. I really like it the way Singapore is going.

So here comes the Opposition.

Let me be idealistic, and say that without the ruling PAP, all oppositions will collapse. They have nothing going for them except to oppose, whatever policies the government has come up with, never mind that the current policies in place is working well.

Listening to the Opposition, creates that desired effect, oppose, and it mostly means deconstructing what is already in place. For example, there is a lot of noise about the GST hike, the Oppositions uses this as a red herring to distracts the public, knowing that no one likes taxes (me included) but taxes is a necessary evil. Opposing eventual GST increase is a populist ideas used to stir the population to dream of a better utopia state.

Policymakers or Politicians

The other reason why I hated elections is that a lot of the PAP leaders are not better policy makers than they are politicians, the Oppositions, on the other hand, are more politicians than policymakers.

I prefer Policymakers to Politicians.

Policymakers

They are the go-to guys to fix problems, and offer solutions. They look into issues, listen to the sentiments, diagnose the issues and suggests a reasonable, actionable course of actions. They take out what might not work, and change it into something better to ensure the bigger strategy is reached. Policymakers are planners, and they take actions. They don’t blame and they will strive to execute the best possible policies to secure the best possible outcome. They don’t play politics.

Policymakers usually makes lousy politicians, because they are boring people, and take a long time to communicate their ideas as they know the full scale complexity of an issue and they have a plan to deal with it, explaining will take too much time, and they like to let their work speak for themselves.

Politicians

Many politicians makes decent policymakers, but there are many politicians, who are merely political and comes with their own personal agendas, sure they will implement policies, but policies they benefit from, first. Politicians are shrewd communicators, using their skills to break down a complex problem into bite-size pros and cons, never mind the rest of the just-as-important fine prints. Politicians often comes with the charisma, charm and eloquence to bamboozle the public, carry a baby and make a dramatic show for to polarise issues so that people will take their side and buy their arguments. They can use power to rally the people, their arguments are typically one sided ‘them and us’ and mostly assigning blame to an extrinsic entity.

Lee Kuan Yew

As far as I can remember, Mr Lee has never assigned blame during his political career (I’m sure Oppositions beg to differ!). When we ‘gain independence’ from Malaya (the truth is they kicked us out), Mr Lee’s rhetoric wasn’t to assign blame. Correct me if I’m wrong, he never openly blamed the Malaysians for kicking us out, he has bigger problems to deal with. But being dealt with a shitty card like this, it is very easy for Mr Lee to stir the hearts and minds of Singaporeans back in 1965 by saying:” They did this to us! They didn’t want us! We will make them pay and they’ll regret ever doing this to us!” Had we build the nation on those words, we would have been a very different Singapore. We would have a Singapore always looking for reason why people hates us, rejected us and we would have been a very angsty bunch of people. But Mr Lee showed us a better way, and look at where we are today!

The kind of political climate I want my children to be in

Mr Lee has said it before, PAP will not lasts forever, a better party will come along, and right now, not even in the near to far future, I see any form of better party, all I see is a bunch of Oppositions, opposing for the sake of opposing.

The New Centre of Gravity

As I age, I’m starting to understand what Mr Lee said, he knew that the policies PAP comes up with isn’t perfect, they are very, very good policies, but they have flaws. He has a vision of another political party that equals or has superior policymakers, and has an actionable plan. The new political force will have no time to assign blame, play politics, lie, oppose for the sake of opposing, and engage in selfish, narrow minded antics that just divides the population. The new political force will be an alternative centre of gravity, one that has a stronger pull, has a better vision, direction and energy, an organization even PAP will concede to.

This party will be Opposition’s Opposition, and yet it will not be another PAP. In the current ecosystem PAP is the ruling party and everyone else is an Opposition, period. The new party isn’t going to be an Opposition, not even an Alternative, it will be a whole new way of thinking how Singapore can more forward, in ways that not even PAP can fathom, when that happens, we know we will have a second coming, but until then, I will have to bear with the current bunch of Opposition and the noise they are making.