I have two standards for my associations, regardless of whether they are personal or professional. The first requirement is that I like and respect you. The second that you like and respect me.
If one of these standards is not met, I find it very difficult to move forward. In my experience, there is no personal, financial, or positional gain worth having if I have to associate with people or institutions I do not like and respect and who do not also like and respect me.
This may seem overly simplistic, perhaps even naive and childish, but I have tried many different combinations of relationship in my life and this is more an explanation of my experience than of my ideology. This is not some belief I have. It is a fact of my being.
Simply put, life is too short to be wasted on relationships within which there is not a mutual sense of appreciation and values. This does not mean that we must like all things about one another nor that we agree on every issue. That is an unrealistic impossibility.
It does mean, however, that in order for me to want to give my time, my attention, and my energy to a relationship with a person, an organization, or a community, I have to first trust and respect their intentions and also know that they trust and respect mine. As Sebastian Junger said, “The easiest and most basic definition of community, of tribe, would be the group of people that you would both help feed and help defend.”
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 & Bodyand Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
We now live in the notification era. Instead of us having to actively seek out information, communication, and interaction, the technology we have at our fingertips has become such that these things actually seek us out.
Our phones, tablets, and computers ding, buzz, and light up all day and all night letting us know that someone is trying to tell us something, that someone is saying something to us or about us, and that someone, somewhere, is paying attention to us.
This triggers not only our curiosity, but also our vanity. It makes us feel special. It makes us feel seen, heard, and appreciated. Attention, recognition, and adoration, we tell ourselves, are only a click, a swipe, a fingerprint, or facial scan away.
We post, we comment, and we share, and each time we do, the anticipation builds. We begin to wonder whether or not people will notice and appreciate our posts, our ideas, our photos, videos, and memes. We become self-conscious, nervous, and frightened. What if they do not?
We wait. We check. We wait. We check again. Finally, it happens and we get the alert telling us that someone was paying attention, someone noticed us, and someone connected in some way with the part of ourselves that we put into the world.
We start to realize that certain posts, shares, and comments get us more attention than others, not good, healthy, or positive attention, per se, but some kind of attention. This begins to change the way we think and the way we present ourselves to the world.
Deep down, we are afraid of being alone and unloved, and it feels good to be noticed, even if for the worst parts of ourselves. Instead of being better, instead of making positive change, and instead of adding value to the world, we become, create, and contribute that which gets noticed, for better or worse.
It is up to us to break the cycle and to do something that matters, not something that is merely noticed.
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 & Bodyand Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
It is difficult to imagine, prior to experiencing it, how one tiny, fragile life can determine so much of your future simply by existing.
Children have no choice as to how, when, where, or from whom they are born and they come into this world with needs and wants that transcend these individual circumstances. No matter how we may try to shape and guide them, there is some part of them that existed prior to our influence, some essence of their being that makes them who they are beyond our desire or control.
All of these mysterious life forces, the impossibility of creation and survival, culminate in moments of overwhelming gratitude if we allow ourselves to experience it. These moments may be fleeting like a star shooting across the sky, but if we affix our gaze long enough to this tiny miracle, we may find ourselves carried away into another depth of the universe, a place where time stands still and there is only us, there is only amazement. It is in this space that we know ourselves because our selves matter not.
-Robert Van Valkenburgh teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Kogen Dojo
Often we do not know what those who love us do for us in silence and when no one else is looking, the things they do without ever asking for recognition or appreciation. These are the little things that do not seem like a big deal, but that add up to us feeling loved and supported if we are paying attention. Unfortunately, all too often these little things and the compassion behind them go unnoticed and unrequited because we are too busy to see them, too used to them for them to seem special, or simply too self absorbed to care.
For two years, the Taikyoku Budo group, and eventually the Brazilian jiu-jitsu group, trained at my house, in my home dojo, Seiya Dojo. My wife gave me permission and support in building the studio. She allowed these people into our home to train several nights a week and on weekend mornings. Sometimes she even served us food. Not once in those two years did she complain about the knocks on the door, the noise coming from the basement, or the late hours we trained until. Never did she hold it over my head as a favor she was doing for me. She knew it was important to me and she supported it.
One evening, in the middle of class, I had to go upstairs to use the bathroom. Someone was in the hall bathroom, so I went into the bathroom attached to the master bedroom where we slept. When I walked in, I realized two things. First, in two years, I had never before come upstairs during class to see what it sounded like from my wife’s perspective. Second, I could hear everything going on in the dojo from the master bathroom, which meant that she could as well. It immediately struck me how much my wife, who is not the suffer in silence type, tolerated so that I could chase my dreams. The next morning I thanked her and that began my search for what would become Kogen Dojo.
-Robert Van Valkenburgh is a practitioner of Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Kogen Dojo
Meditations on God 