It aint easy...

i was a big fan of the Ninja Turtles (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to be precise) when I was a kid...

who am i kidding?? I'm STILL a fan... well, not to the same extent, but I still think they were awesome characters, especially with those cool weapons n all...

neways, pardon the digression...

I owned a copy of their first movie.. aww mann, dun get me started on it, it was heaven for a kid like me who was so into martial arts n a big fan of ninja turtles, since it was the first realization of the shelled heroes on the big screen... Well, there was this one scene I recall, its where Splinter (errr, Master Splinter, that is) has this lil talk over a couple of drinks with the turtles during Happy Hour (ok, ok, it was really some sorta sensei-student-ninja-counselling thing) and goes sumthing along these lines:

Splinter: You are young, have loads of energy, testosterone, a very high sperm coun... errr, i mean, you are young...
TMNT: Ahuh, that we r, yessir Master Splinter sir...
Splinter: But one day, I will get my hairy rat's ass out of this sewer... (kidding... actually, his words were: but one day, I will be gone)
TMNT: No shit dude, look at u, ur like, OLD n stuff (kiddin again.. their reaction was more along the lines of 'OK, this sounds like serious shit, i better put this pizza away n sit down n listen')

So basically, to sum it all up, Splinter's tryin to tell em that right now ur havin fun n all that jazz, but one day i wont be around to take care of u, n ur gonna have to look after urselves, look after each other, clean up ur rooms by urself, wipe ur own ass, and, needless to mention, use ur ninja teachings wisely... u know the likes...

Now we get to the point of this blog:

After our capo training today, we all got a similar lecture from our instructor... n it reminded me of the above movie... n made me think. His words were sumthin like this:

Instructor: You guys are the advanced class. But I get better results from the beginner's class, since they train much more seriously n harder... u guys think its all ok right now, since capoeira's just a part-time thing for most of u, n everybody's a friend here... so when u train with them u dun wanna train hard for fear of injurin urself or the other person... but one day if some guy from another group comes to join our roda, ur gonna be in big trouble... ofcourse, first im gonna go head to head with him to make sure he doesnt cause trouble... but wut if im not there one day, and some guy comes along and messes around with u and u cant get back at him... its ur own problem...

Hearin all this got me thinkin mann... i mean, wut if one day he really isnt with us in a roda n some dude comes along n hands our asses back to us... damn... thought scares me... heck, not just that, wut if ur faced with a member of your OWN group who wants to take u down so bad he/she can taste it.. then what?? ur stuck with that forever...

n that got me thinkin.. I gotta stop slackin off... its not so much about training more, but rather bout training harder n smarter... cuz one day it might just happen... n rather than go home with a shattered knee or cut lip, id rather have the pride of successfully standin up n defendin myself (yeah, yeah, reminiscent of Custer's Last Stand, I know)..

Sigh... gotta work harder ppl... train harder, giv it all ive got... nothin comes easy...