Smashing It

 

(Thanks for the inspiration David)

This weekend we met David and his lovely daughter. David is a junior high school teacher, which means he has nearly infinite patience given that he needs to navigate early-stage teenagers through one of the most challenging periods of their lives. He is a direct, no-nonsense guy, and it turns out I had some things to learn from him, too.

One of David's favorite phases is "smash it". Over the course of the weekend, we "smashed" snowboarding runs (Naeba), "smashed" our breakfasts, and even "smashed" some of the party games he had prepared to entertain us on Saturday night. I came to love that phrase and have been thinking about it all weekend.

These days we are inundated with data and information to an overwhelming degree. People can't stop looking at their phones, at Youtube/TikTok/Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat. We have so much news and content coming at us it's becoming harder and harder to determine what is true, what is real (not AI-generated), what to focus on or prioritize, and even when to act. We often feel like if we wait just a little longer, we might get new/better information to make better decisions. We get stuck in "analysis paralysis" and end up doing nothing at all. I asked David about his phrase and he explained that, having grown up on a farm, there were always chores to be done no matter the day of the week or the weather. They simply had to be done every day. These were not deep-thought experiments. They were tasks that had both vital importance to the farm operation and were shared across the family members. Standing around was not going to help. In such cases, David advised, the best approach was to just smash it out ("get it done"). I was reminded that it is critically important to live with a sense of urgency; a bias to action. This mindset helps us prioritize and then just get moving, get busy so we can get things done.

I thought of a passage in Yamamoto Tsunetomo's famous book "Hagakure" (Hidden leaves) , which was his treatise on Bushido for young samurai. He wrote "The Way of the samurai is one of immediacy. It is best to dash in headlong." This does not condone foolhardiness, rather it is rewarding the notion that when we know what must be done we must not hesitate. This is also referred to as "Right Action in the Right Moment" and is an aspirational outcome of good zen practice.

In fighting particularly, it is important to learn how to recognize danger and, when we do, to act boldly without hesitation until the matter is resolved rather than waiting for a situation to escalate out of control. This decisiveness gives us the best chance of minimizing risk and injury, not only to ourselves, but to others (including our attacker(s)). Decisiveness is not to be underestimated.

There is a time for long and deliberate reflection, of course. However, in general we would all do well to have a constant sense of urgency about living our lives, and to do so with decisiveness and immediacy.

Thank you for the lesson, David-Sensei!

Let's Smash it at training!