I remember this old saying from when I was a kid, entitled, The Paradox of Time: “Time, it runs when I’m late, it crawls while I wait.” It’s trite, but true. Similarly, there are many such paradoxes in karate-do… proving that God has a real sense of surprises or irony. It’s just that oftentimes, things are not as one would expect. For example:

—When making a fist, the strike point is concentrated in the first two knuckles (for beginners, one knuckle or thumbpoint etc, for advanced practitioners)… but the strongest fist is accomplished by squeezing hard and tight on the last two fingers.

—When kicking, the more important leg is the supporting leg/foot/ankle, not necessarily the kicking side.

—A basic rule of interaction is: respond to strength with soft technique, respond to soft with strong technique.

—Very often, when one is fresh and strong, one’s bad habits/techniques manifest themselves. When one’s strength/energy have been depleted, your best techniques are free to emerge.

—It’s often when you’re most tired and don’t feel like going to class that you experience your best training and make the biggest breakthroughs.

—Conversely, at times you’ll be energized and in a rush to go class and get there, only to find out that you left your bottle of water, or your belt, or your gi top, or your gi pants, or your (your choice) at home.

—You haven’t been able to train for a month (illness, work, school, vacation, conflicting events, laziness, etc) and you finally make it to class, only to find out it’s been cancelled.

—Worse, you haven’t been able to train for two months (illness, work, school, vacation, conflicting events, laziness, etc) and you finally make it to class… only to find out, Sensei says that you’ve actually improved during that time.

—You have trained diligently and learned so many techniques, combinations, katas etc… and still have trouble telling the difference between left and right.

—At times, you try so hard to do a technique that you inadvertently are the only one to yell out a loud kiai, to your embarrassment. Other times, you’ll try so hard to do a technique, you forget to kiai at all.

—You train diligently for years and seem to come to a point where you’re having a more and more difficult time learning something new. Then you’re asked to teach some basics to a beginning white belt, and in the midst of sharing… you learn something new. And you realize that all the time that you were training, trying to learn karate-do… your senseis and sempais were busy teaching, but ironically, were actually learning from you all the time!