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Thursday Reflections: Understand the harm and benefit in everything.

All around us there are many things going on all at once. It’s impossible for us to keep track of everything that surrounds us. Sometimes while we’re focused on one thing, we miss the whole picture. And other times we simply stumble into the middle of something already on going. Confused yet? Good.

What I’m talking about is the circumstances that come up every day. Most of us interact with other people for quite a large sum of each of our work days. When we’re off, or rather on the weekends, we interact with others outside of work. All this interaction creates possibilities. And a portion of the possibilities aren’t very good.

Imagine walking into any store on any given day and low and behold a fight between a couple of people is going on right in front of you. Like most fights, lets say one is obviously being overpowered by the other, and in desperate need of help. What do you do?

These are the kinds of situations that you ultimately need to know the harm and benefit of helping out. How can you possibly choose who to attack if you don’t have an understanding of the situation? What if the man being beaten had just been caught trying to attack/grab the other mans kid? However, you could take the approach of helping out the wounded person, without necessarily attacking the “aggressor”(or dominating opponent), but what happens if that gets you attacked, beaten, or killed? Each path you take will have its harm and benefit. Some would suggest that the simple solution is to notify the authorities, by calling the police and such, but not to intervene in any way. But that also has it’s own harmful effect. What if the man died because you did nothing?

All of this applies not only to circumstances that may arise, but also to any thing you do, including Martial Arts. Every move you make has these same principles. There will never be a move that is right no matter what. There will always be harm and benefit to each movement. I believe that Miyamoto’s rule of: Understand the harm and benefit in everything, isn’t saying to necessarily seek the one and only true answer. I believe he’s simply requesting that you understand what the pros and cons are, more or less. Deciding on which is right has no effect on what the pros and cons are. Those are static amongst everyone.

Just remember that before you say or do anything, you might be better off taking a moment to reflect on what the possible outcomes might be. A good example can be found on Black Belt Mama.