Every day, there is so much to be thankful for, and often-times, we seem to be too busy to stop and reflect on all of our blessings.  When we pause to reflect, it’s really looking at yesterday, viewed through the lens of the present.  After some close and honest introspection, we are often surprised to discover how the multitude of past experiences, both good and bad, helped to shape so many of the blessings we enjoy today.  While there are some who tend to dwell on the past, many of us are solely focused and working towards the future.  Either approach may be less than ideal and we may not end up where we intended to be.

Years ago, in church, the pastor shared an analogy with us that I still find personally meaningful till this day.  It was about aiming a rifle (one’s trajectory in life) at a target (one’s goals in life) and hopefully, hitting (reaching) it.  He explained that atop the barrel are a pair of sights – the front sight at the end of the barrel and the rear sights (you know, the one with the v-shaped groove) close to your eye. The front sight equates to our look towards the future from the present, while the rear sights equate to what we’ve learned from our past experiences.  You can choose to use the front sight, or you can choose to use the rear sights, or you can choose to use neither and “shoot from the hip”.  However, we all know that to have the very best chance of success, one should try to align both the front and rear sights with the target.  Life is like that – living/repeating only what we did in the past will conceivably bring us the same results, while racing forward with sole focus on the future may bring us to somewhere other than we intended.  It is through the judicious use of both the lessons learned from past experience, matched with a clear and committed work ethic towards the future, that give us the best chance of attaining our goals.  So it is with life, so it is with Karate-Do.

Getting back to Thanksgiving, many of us can recall the image of a Pilgrim holding a turkey in one hand and a blunderbuss (you know, the old flintlock with the flared muzzle) in the other hand.  Those old weapons were loaded with all kinds of shot and weren’t intended for accuracy (no front/rear sights, haha) but for spraying a wide cone of small projectiles at close range, kind of like a poor man’s shotgun.  Apparently, this is one of the Pilgrim myths and the blunderbuss was primarily a close quarters fighting weapons, especially used at sea by fighting men in ship-to-ship battles, as portrayed in pirate movies.  While entertaining, I pray that none of us ever take the blunderbuss approach to life 🙂