We are more than our weakness and we are more than our strength. We are complex creatures. We are beings of both immense fragility and great power.
We are searchers and we are settlers. We are never satisfied with what we have or who we are, while simultaneously all too willing to live with less than we are capable of or deserve.
We are empathetic, loving, and caring, able to build and grow and heal. We are also cruel, selfish, and hurtful, drawn to and pain and suffering and destruction.
We are more than how others perceive us and we are more than how we perceive ourselves. We are also less than these as well.
We are the light and the darkness. We are whole and we are broken. We are everything and nothing, with both limitless potential and limitations.
We are eternal and fleeting, neither created nor destroyed, here for a lifetime, but gone and forgotten prior to ever having really gotten started. We should behave accordingly.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as well as a founding member of the Severna Park and Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
Street art photo taken by Robert Van Valkenburgh, artist unknown unless otherwise noted.
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