Dancing With The Sword

Last night I did iaijutsu for fun.

I realized yesterday morning as I was trying to get in some practice before I had to go run to do something else that my entire iaijutsu life for the past year plus period has been completely consumed by my in dojo certification preparation.  For that period of time I have been focusing on a very specific group of kata, both sword and open hand.  It is important work of course - achieving my  certification is something which I need to do at this point - but the I realized something as I practiced in the morning:  all the fun had gone out of it.

That is a problem, of course.  If we are not doing something we supposedly enjoy for the fun at some level, it simply becomes another chore that we have to accomplish - in other words, the job that we do not really like but know that we need to do.  Our hobbies become our work, and then our life becomes all work with scarcely a moment of joy in it.

So in the evening I went out for fun.

I bought myself Pompeii by Bastille, geared up, took my shinken,  and went outside to practice.  We had some kind of front blowing through so the wind was whistling around my hakama.  Drums and chorale arrangements around head, the sky completely dark without a hint of the moon, I danced with the sword.

I made certain that I did not of the kata which I am currently learning.  Instead I practiced other kata I had learned or made up my own, practicing cuts and putting them together in ways that are probably as impractical as they are fun.  Back and forth, blocks and cuts and footwork, music soaring me away with the wind.

I probably did not accomplish anything formally wonderful last night.  My certificate is probably no closer than it was before I started.  But for a time I practiced the sword for the joy of practicing the sword, at least in my imagination letting the music chords lift me in the cutting and thrusting to the swordsman I always see in my dreams.

It was wonderful.