Wushu Waves

Lots of kids take some sort of martial arts.  When I was a kid, it was all Tae Kwon Do and Karate.  Now it's all MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. My son takes Kung Fu. I get the sense that for most kids in martial arts, it's a sort of one and done deal.  They go in for a while, learn something, find out that the discipline it takes to succeed at a martial art is a rigorous hardship and inevitably take off to play for their travelling "select" soccer team instead.  I'm not sure what kind of kid my son will be. Maybe I'm not sure what kind of parent I will be.  When he wants to join the soccer team, or when I want him to go to music class, or when school get's more intense (or when all these things happen at once) will I be able to justify making him adhere to the strict regime necessary to keep studying under the master he has now? I vacillate in my prognostication.  I'd like to give my son the sort of focus and initiative to excel that I never got in my willy-nilly do-whatever-you-like upbringing.  Because as great as the freedom of childhood self-expression is, the pitfalls of a directionless youth are the gaping holes in my own life.  But all this just tumbles into so much psycho-babble Dr. Spock-esque pontification. The real lesson here to be learned is one my Tai Chi teacher always reiterates: function and form must be one. Bruce Lee said the same thing.  It is the whole raison d'etre behind mixed martial arts.  Kung Fu is full of "forms" (or in Karate, katas) particular patterns of movements designed to train the body the most efficient muscle memory for proper self-defense.  These end up looking like extended choreographed solo expositions of punches blocks and kicks.   Even when you see the old Chinese people at the park going through their Tai Chi forms, they are basically practicing the best way to repel and redirect an attacker's energy and deliver an immobilizing response. At the end of class, my teacher often shows us what our moves look like in real time, in real use, during a fight.  It is a beautiful and scary thing to see.  In the end he always reminds us that the point is not the form itself, but its ultimate usefulness that matters.  There is some back and forth about wave-riding equipment.  The prevailing view is to have a smallish quiver of tools from which to properly pluck given the right circumstances. I've always had to hold to the view that one should pick a board and stick with it; learn to ride it in as many conditions as possible; become one with the weird nuances inherent in the board.  I've probably had to take this point of view because I am simply not a good enough surfer to enjoy swapping out boards, simply not quick enough a study to derive enjoyment out of it.  Besides, as Jack would say, hipster surfers ride crappy boards to hide the fact that they suck at surfing.  Maybe I'm Jack's hipster surfer trying desperately to garner street cred on my beaters.  Of course that's another road into psychoanalysis best left for some other time.  All I can say is that it's great to see a guy doing arresting things on all types of equipment, having obviously studied his forms.