I like mottos. I feel that a club's motto is like a mission statement boiled down to its very essence, like an idea that punches into your consciousness with a few words rather than dancing around meaning with several carefully crafted, but essentially boring, sentences.
I also like the sayings that develop organically as club members go about their training and as they grow together in their work. I like how mottos can be well thought out to have the most meaning and importance, whereas sayings just kind of happen. But their spontaneous, unpredictable nature doesn't make them in any way less important than an official motto, and in some case can actually tell you more about a club than the official motto.
So today I'd like to share our club motto with you all, as well as some of the sayings that have just kind of cropped up as time has gone on.
This is our official motto. I really like it because it implies the hard attacking, the relentless nature, the measured ferocity of the German tradition. It captures the nature of what our club teaches and practices, that when given an opening you attack, then attack again based upon what is open, and again attack, and again, and again until you're finally victorious or you are yourself hit. It suggests seeing an opening, responding quickly, and driving hard until you achieve your goal.
But as you can maybe see, there is a hidden underlying message to the motto. It's not just about fighting, nor is it just about training, nor HEMA, nor Longsword. It's about life. This, ultimately, is what I truly love about it. Our club motto isn't just about how we train, it's a message about how to live a life well lived.
And please understand, this has nothing to do with violence or aggression; what's acceptable in the training space is intolerable in everyday life. It's not about aggression, but it certainly is about intensity. It's about setting your sights on a goal -- an opening if you will! -- and then going after it relentlessly until you've either achieved what you wanted or you have expended everything you have in a valiant yet failed attempt.
Our motto gets to the core issue of life and, certainly, of HEMA: It's acceptable to fail so long as you have tried your best. You gave it your all, you used all your skills to the limit of those skills, and you fell short. Fine. Train harder, work harder, come back next time and try again. But most importantly try!
Or, in other words, "Strike like lightning, fight like thunder."
This is the first saying I want to discuss. When I was talking about sayings in the introduction I mentioned how they tend to develop organically, and this saying is the perfect example of that.
This saying came about through realizing that what I was doing in my own fencing wasn't working together with my work teaching the basics of Longsword to various students. It wasn't planned, it wasn't crafted, it just happened.
It happened because of my own frustration with feeling like a Longsword fencer "must" do this and they "have to" do that because this is how people fence, together with students' upset with trying to capture a movement that felt unnatural or odd to them. It suddenly struck me that first we really must learn how to fight in a generic, cookie cutter, across-the-board kind of way so that we're all on the same page, but then we figure out how to fight for ourselves.
As long as what we do is HEMA, as long as it is historically sound, as long as it comes from the treatises, it doesn't matter how you modify the Masters' teachings to fit your own body. I personally have found this saying to be quite helpful in taking the generalities and molding them to fit my own needs, and the students feel better knowing they need to learn things a given way -- for example, how to hold the sword in vom Tag -- but then can modify it later to suit them.
And again, you can see how this has merit in life generally as well as in HEMA specifically. We're all given a template about how to make the best of life, whether by our parents, our teachers, our pastors, or whatever. And of course this is good; a lot of folks who are never given such a template spend a lot of time floating aimlessly through life.
But the bottom line is, no matter how good the template is, no matter how effective or healthy, it is a rough template because we are the ones who have to trim something off here or add a little there to make it fit our lives perfectly. Once again, life reflects HEMA in this regard. So first, we learn to fight like everyone else, then we learn to fight like ourselves.
I suppose you could say this is something of a marketing tagline, but its also a saying we use.
This basically gets to the idea that folks very often feel disaffected or disconnected from their own lives, their own selves, all too often in modern life. They feel there is something inside them, something that they would even think of as being the most sincere version of themselves, but they don't quite know how to access that other self.
That's part of what I hope it is we do, and by "we" here I mean both our club as well as HEMA in general.
Modern folk very often put on pretenses in everyday life and act in ways we believe we have to -- and of course, that's often a good thing, because no matter how much the idiot in the cubicle next to us might irritate us slugging said idiot in the nose is a really bad idea. But as we behave appropriately and in healthy, pro-social ways we also often cover up those wilder, primal, less refined aspects of ourselves.
It is these primal aspects, these things that connect our modern selves to a more natural, uncomplicated existence that are represented here by the Wolf. It is a less refined and yet still positive aspect of ourselves, and one that needs to be fed from time to time -- one that thrives on the intense energy of sword fighting, the sheer power of grappling, or the raw pleasure of a perfect thrust well-landed.
And so, that's why we invite people to join our classes and to unleash their inner Wolf. It's a good thing!
OK, so there you have it. Our motto and just a few of the sayings that have developed in our club over the years.
So I'm curious, what is your club motto? What does it mean and how did it come about? Do you have any sayings that have developed, and what do they mean to you? I'd be very interested to know!
As always, stay loose and train hard everyone.
-- Scott
I also like the sayings that develop organically as club members go about their training and as they grow together in their work. I like how mottos can be well thought out to have the most meaning and importance, whereas sayings just kind of happen. But their spontaneous, unpredictable nature doesn't make them in any way less important than an official motto, and in some case can actually tell you more about a club than the official motto.
So today I'd like to share our club motto with you all, as well as some of the sayings that have just kind of cropped up as time has gone on.
"Strike like lightning, fight like thunder"
This is our official motto. I really like it because it implies the hard attacking, the relentless nature, the measured ferocity of the German tradition. It captures the nature of what our club teaches and practices, that when given an opening you attack, then attack again based upon what is open, and again attack, and again, and again until you're finally victorious or you are yourself hit. It suggests seeing an opening, responding quickly, and driving hard until you achieve your goal.
But as you can maybe see, there is a hidden underlying message to the motto. It's not just about fighting, nor is it just about training, nor HEMA, nor Longsword. It's about life. This, ultimately, is what I truly love about it. Our club motto isn't just about how we train, it's a message about how to live a life well lived.
And please understand, this has nothing to do with violence or aggression; what's acceptable in the training space is intolerable in everyday life. It's not about aggression, but it certainly is about intensity. It's about setting your sights on a goal -- an opening if you will! -- and then going after it relentlessly until you've either achieved what you wanted or you have expended everything you have in a valiant yet failed attempt.
Our motto gets to the core issue of life and, certainly, of HEMA: It's acceptable to fail so long as you have tried your best. You gave it your all, you used all your skills to the limit of those skills, and you fell short. Fine. Train harder, work harder, come back next time and try again. But most importantly try!
Or, in other words, "Strike like lightning, fight like thunder."
"First, you learn to fight like everyone else; then you learn to fight like you."
This is the first saying I want to discuss. When I was talking about sayings in the introduction I mentioned how they tend to develop organically, and this saying is the perfect example of that.
This saying came about through realizing that what I was doing in my own fencing wasn't working together with my work teaching the basics of Longsword to various students. It wasn't planned, it wasn't crafted, it just happened.
It happened because of my own frustration with feeling like a Longsword fencer "must" do this and they "have to" do that because this is how people fence, together with students' upset with trying to capture a movement that felt unnatural or odd to them. It suddenly struck me that first we really must learn how to fight in a generic, cookie cutter, across-the-board kind of way so that we're all on the same page, but then we figure out how to fight for ourselves.
As long as what we do is HEMA, as long as it is historically sound, as long as it comes from the treatises, it doesn't matter how you modify the Masters' teachings to fit your own body. I personally have found this saying to be quite helpful in taking the generalities and molding them to fit my own needs, and the students feel better knowing they need to learn things a given way -- for example, how to hold the sword in vom Tag -- but then can modify it later to suit them.
And again, you can see how this has merit in life generally as well as in HEMA specifically. We're all given a template about how to make the best of life, whether by our parents, our teachers, our pastors, or whatever. And of course this is good; a lot of folks who are never given such a template spend a lot of time floating aimlessly through life.
But the bottom line is, no matter how good the template is, no matter how effective or healthy, it is a rough template because we are the ones who have to trim something off here or add a little there to make it fit our lives perfectly. Once again, life reflects HEMA in this regard. So first, we learn to fight like everyone else, then we learn to fight like ourselves.
"Unleash your inner Wolf"
I suppose you could say this is something of a marketing tagline, but its also a saying we use.
This basically gets to the idea that folks very often feel disaffected or disconnected from their own lives, their own selves, all too often in modern life. They feel there is something inside them, something that they would even think of as being the most sincere version of themselves, but they don't quite know how to access that other self.
That's part of what I hope it is we do, and by "we" here I mean both our club as well as HEMA in general.
Modern folk very often put on pretenses in everyday life and act in ways we believe we have to -- and of course, that's often a good thing, because no matter how much the idiot in the cubicle next to us might irritate us slugging said idiot in the nose is a really bad idea. But as we behave appropriately and in healthy, pro-social ways we also often cover up those wilder, primal, less refined aspects of ourselves.
It is these primal aspects, these things that connect our modern selves to a more natural, uncomplicated existence that are represented here by the Wolf. It is a less refined and yet still positive aspect of ourselves, and one that needs to be fed from time to time -- one that thrives on the intense energy of sword fighting, the sheer power of grappling, or the raw pleasure of a perfect thrust well-landed.
And so, that's why we invite people to join our classes and to unleash their inner Wolf. It's a good thing!
OK, so there you have it. Our motto and just a few of the sayings that have developed in our club over the years.
So I'm curious, what is your club motto? What does it mean and how did it come about? Do you have any sayings that have developed, and what do they mean to you? I'd be very interested to know!
As always, stay loose and train hard everyone.
-- Scott
Comments
Post a Comment