THE LONELY JOURNEY

 by Phillip Starr

For all of the colorful verbage we hear about walking the martial path, there is a consideration that is rarely mentioned. When you step onto this path, you must do it for yourself. You will begin alone and although you may enjoy the camaraderie of some fellow travelers from time to time, you must take each step alone. And of course, there will be times when you are completely alone and sometimes the burden of this aloneness weighs heavy on you. Many there are who can tolerate the loneliness for only so long before they turn around and go back.

For those who continue along the Way, there are the naysayers. Many of them mean well; they simply don't understand why on earth you want to be so involved in what they perceive as a rather exotic and foreign hobby. “Why do you have to be so different?”, they ask. “Why don't you do XX or XXX?” If you let it, this kind of babbling can really get to you. Rather than try to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it, they reject it out of hand because it's foreign to them and doesn't fit into their “box.” It doesn't necessarily mean that they're trying to be cruel or uncaring; they just don't understand.

Those who truly seek the Way are on a quest of sorts; striving towards a goal that cannot be reached in this single lifetime; perfection. And such an enterprise brings with it all forms of suffering – mental, spiritual, and even emotional – which must be borne in solitude; the only relief is to be found through more intense practice. We try to find the answers to questions that are themselves difficult to understand. Oftentimes, just discovering the question itself is a profound discovery. But this is the Way we have chosen to follow. For a lifetime.