2020 and Gratitude

‘Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do’. Bruce Lee

I have written before about how my desire to create something meaningful to pass onto my son, combined with my exploration of what mindfulness is, led me to articulate what I believe the practise of Kung Fu to be. Any action or activity that is carried out in an aware, focused, resilient and integrated way is Kung Fu. I have since realised that I missed something really important when I have previously articulated this idea. The missing part is that it is the idea of being orientated and navigating towards awareness, focus, resilience and integration which is of greatest importance not necessarily being there already. So often we are not already positioned where we want, or feel we ought, to be. This can lead us to feel disappointed, dissatisfied, unhappy, anxious or depressed. However we may have missed the fact that overall we are often doing our best to head towards what we feel is what is best for us, our families and our work etc. By focussing our attention on our efforts to succeed as opposed to our failures to be there already we can be proud of this work, whilst acknowledging that sometimes we could do better at some things. This mindset can allow us to hold two competing and perhaps seemingly contradictory ideas together. We can simultaneously focus on our current achievements, together with our insufficiencies, in a useful balance as we orientate and navigate towards meaningful action and being.

I believe gratitude and perspective are the twin pillars that support our capacity to hold two such competing ideas together and create a more honest and harmonious perspective of ourselves in the world. So often we place criticism before gratitude and perspective rather than behind them. If we are told ten things, nine of which are positive and one which is constructive (or perhaps negative), our attention is hijacked by the one that is negative and we cannot focus anymore on the positive. This seems to be true whether the criticism is from ourselves to ourselves, from others to ourselves and from ourselves to others and society as a whole. I feel this happens when we lose our connection to gratitude for everything that we have to be grateful for, for example from the air we breathe, to running water in our taps and food in our kitchens, to key workers and the NHS, the list is endless. I have noticed in myself that without daily practice of gratitude and reflective perspective taking it is ‘natural’ for me to tend towards my attention being hijacked by unhelpful thoughts. 

We are taught to connect to gratitude from an early age. Parents, grandparents and teachers can often be heard reminding children to say ‘thank you’ when they are small so we learn to connect to gratitude. We recognise it and make it one of the primary lessons that we pass on to our children and yet somehow it can get lost. In our world of relative comfort, connecting to how truly fortunate we are to be living here and now, as opposed to at almost any time in history, is important. Although we may recognise that it is true, we often don’t see it as a practise, a part of our daily routine as much as brushing our teeth. I feel it is as important to connect regularly, perhaps daily, to what our life could have been like at any point in history in terms of the benefits we enjoy. For me this can take the form of a personal story; for example, my dad wasn’t (and still isn’t) much of a talker when it comes to his childhood, but I do know that his family, like many peoples’ families growing up in an inner city in the US in the 50’s, did not have much money. His father, my grandfather who I never knew, worked two full time jobs to support his family. He worked during the day and he worked a night shift. We all have these personal stories that we can connect to and get perspective for where we are today, both as an individual and as a society. Another way in which I practise reflective perspective taking is by reading books about times that are so full of suffering as to be almost unimaginable from our current lives. When I read about Auschwitz or the Soviet Gulags, for example, I am taken to a place where hell truly existed on earth. I am able to use this shared memory to create perspective on any challenge that I am facing today. When I practise feeling grateful for all the wonderful things in my life, from simply being alive to experiencing the love I have for my son, to knowing Kung Fu, I build the internal strength to be able to hold all that I am grateful for with all that still needs to be done both in myself and in the world. 

Without daily practise of gratitude and perspective I have found that I am unable to confront my inadequacies and the inadequacies of the world in a useful way. I knew that being grateful was good and right but by turning it into a skill to be practised I actually feel better. So this has, I think, been my biggest learning for 2020: that it is the application (not simply the understanding) of navigating towards aware, focused, resilient, and integrated action that yields the greatest sense of inner success. As Bruce Lee said, ‘knowing is not enough, we must apply’.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, one of the principal things that I have been most grateful for this year is the support of you all. Thank you for being a fundamental part of us finishing 2020 still with a business and with the hope of still having a business in 2021 and beyond. Cambridge Kung Fu is how I am able to provide for my family and for how we are able to support our instructor team and their families. Thank you, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from myself and my partner in crime, Sifu Col.

Sifu Ross