Karate, Tigers, and You!!
[I:http://mymartialartsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/AlCase10.jpg] Trying to eat something that has bigger teeth than you is foolish. I know that when it comes to words of wisdom, this may seem weak, but there is a certain undeniable truth here. Such as when a young student is heard complaining that he is tired.
“Al, I’m awfully tired.” I looked at the student and knew that it wasn’t that he was tired, he was just being foolish. The problem was that he had chosen to be foolish right in the middle of my karate class.
When my class is interrupted by one of these leaders of future society for such foolishness I always feel peculiarly irked. I am suddenly taken by the desire to pick up that large stick with a nail in it that I keep in the office of my school and…but I don’t. Instead, I relay the story of the tiger, which is quite well known in other societies, but not too well known in our own.
Two monks were walking through the jungle one day. One was young and one was old. The younger one said, “Can’t we stop–I’m tired!”
“Not yet,” said the older monk. The old monk moved a little faster. He wasn’t in the mood to hear complaints from the younger generation.
“I can’t. I’m utterly exhausted. I’m stopping,” and the younger monk collapsed on a boulder on the side of the trail and began to fan himself.
“We’ll never get to the next temple if we stop and rest. Get on your feet now!” The older monk stared at the young man in exasperation.
“No way I can continue. I’m too exhausted to go on!” Fanning himself, the younger man refused to move.
The older monk, seeing a tiger sleeping in the bamboo, picked up a rock and threw it at the tiger. The tiger jumped up and chased the two monks. The monks ran like…well…like a tiger was after them.
The monks managed to get away from the tiger. When they were safe the younger one turned to the older monk. “Why’d you do that?”
The older monk started to laugh. “The way you ran, I guess you weren’t really tired after all.” Recognizing superior wisdom, the younger monk, began to laugh, too.
A story as this has a good a moral. The monks had only been running for their lives. The tiger, on the other hand, was only running for his dinner.
And here come my words of wisdom. Is every day like a run for your life? Or are you one of these fellows that believes everything has bigger teeth that you?
And the student in my class who started the whole thing by saying he was tired? If he still complains about being tired after I tell him the story about the tiger…I get out the stick. The nail in it is really quite sharp!
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