Practice overcoming the shame and regret of your mistakes and, through your words and your actions, you will replace these feelings with humility and courage.
Acknowledging and admitting your mistakes, and trying to do right by those you have wronged, is an investment in your honor, your integrity, and the truth.
It is also an investment in your relationships.
Whatever pain you feel now for amending your mistakes is a raindrop in the ocean compared to the pain you will feel for the rest of your life for failing to do so.
Our principles should take precedence over our desires.
What we want should never be more important to us than what is right.
The problem is that, without a clearly defined, tested, and proven set of first principles in our lives, it is very difficult to know the difference between what we desire and what is good, true, and just.
We are not born understanding this distinction.
We are born only with needs.
As we get older, these needs turn into wants.
It is not until we gain the ability to make decisions that morality becomes something we must concern ourselves with.
Even then, morality is something that must be taught.
If we are not taught do discern between right and wrong, it is very difficult to understand that what we want, or even what seems to get us what we want, is not necessarily what is right.
In fact, the more that we try to dedicate ourselves to what is right, the more we find that our desires, and sometimes even our perceived needs, are often in direct conflict with what is moral.
This does not mean that we should adjust our morality to suit our desires.
Instead, we must work diligently to train, shape, and focus our desires toward that which is right.
The more we do this, the more consistently we are able to put our principles, our morality, ahead of our desires, the more we find that what we want is actually what is right and that passion, frivolity, and selfishness are undesirable distractions from our purpose.
Our purpose is to live a principled, meaningful, and impactful life.
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.
Our choices are not always as clear as right or wrong; we must sometimes choose between beauty and ugliness.
We often think of morality in terms of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong. This type of either/or thinking makes us feel better about the path we have chosen because it places us in a position of moral superiority to those who have made a different choice from us. We tell ourselves that we are on the righteous path and that others who believe or behave differently are on the path of evil and corruption.
We claim special knowledge with these kinds of distinctions. They are predicated on the belief that we have unique insight into the truth of things, giving us the ability to see beyond the lies and deceptions that others fall prey to so easily. Ours is authentic wisdom and only we are educated and inspired enough to know, to see, to hear, and to speak the truth, while all who do not believe as we do are necessarily either foolish, immoral, or both.
It is true that some beliefs and behaviors are undeniably more honorable, righteous, and just than their reprehensible, unethical, and despicable opposites. Quite often, however, this distinction has more to do with benevolent or malicious intent than anything else and most people, ourselves included, in spite of flawed beliefs and imperfect actions, do not actually want to do harm to others. We are far better off, instead of being the constant judge and jury of what is right and wrong, a position which is not only unhelpful, but also quite exhausting, looking at our own beliefs and behaviors, and asking ourselves in each moment whether, through them, we are adding more beauty or more ugliness to the world.
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 think we know what scary things exist in this world, but for most of us, thankfully, this is simply theory.
Often, we separate ourselves from the bad in the world and think of morality in terms of a rational choice made between right and wrong, wherein those who do wrong have simply made a poor choice. Most people who do wrong are people just like us who have gone astray, perhaps out of fear, selfishness, a perceived lack of choice, bad influence, or simply by mistake.
They are otherwise good people who have made mistakes. In many, if not most cases this is true. Somewhere far beyond this rationalized sense of morality, however, exist anomalies, aberrations of humanity who are simply evil.
There is no rationality behind who they are or what they do. They do wrong and they harm others because there is something sick or broken about their souls. These are the people, too far gone to be reasoned with or rehabilitated, for whom there is no return to decency.
These people are not like us. Their very presence feels alien. There is something deeply disturbing, even disgusting about them, but they may hide this part of themselves so well that we cannot see it.
There is no preparing for who they are or what they are capable of because it is so far removed from what it is to be human that it is unpredictable to our rational brains. It is animalistic and predatory. It is terrifyingly inhuman and inhumane.
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
Artwork by Ana, except where otherwise noted
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Meditations on God 