drawingYears ago, as a tennis player, I wondered if my game would suffer after not playing for a couple weeks.  Instead I went to a woman’s professional tournament every day and watched.  When I did go out again, I played the best tennis of my life.

I have been studying hip flexibility.  Recently, I sat in on a conference call with a martial arts master discussing it.  It was just a few small comments he made here and there.  It was nothing that was not already in his book, but it was just something about the tone and inflection in his voice as he spoke the words.  It made all the difference.  I learned a tremendous amount in that forty-minute call.

My uncle was a cabinet maker.  I remember as a kid noticing when he picked up what I recall being a 2×4 about two feet long as he contemplated his plans of what he would make out of it.  The wood seemed to become clay in his hands… something he could mold however he chose.  I learned more about woodworking in that moment than from anything else in my life.

My teacher gave great lectures, but it was what I experienced and observed in his presence that transformed me.  It baffled me… how some would miss the very best of his teachings by ignoring all but the surface of his words.  Really, ignorance (ignore-ance) is not a lack of facts.  It is a state of mind.  Many highly knowledgeable people remain quite ignorant.  Yet there are those with little knowledge of a topic, who know it profoundly.

When people come to my lectures for facts and information, if they are not attentive, facts and information is about all they may take away.  An attentive student would gain much more if we all just took a walk in the park.  A chess master once said that an hour with a chess master is worth a lifetime of study.

© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.