Masters and spoilt children

When I was at school my biology teacher hated me.

Not a surprise I hear you say, we don't even know who you are and already some of us hate you.

I suggest you learn to live with it. I manage somehow.

Anyway we were talking about my teacher.

He hated me because I hated him.

Actually it wasn't quite that simple. I didn't just hate him. I went out of my way to prove him wrong at every opportunity because he simply couldn't abide to be wrong.

I'd sit up long into the night watching the Open University on tv and reading my dad's geology books in order to be able to prove him wrong. It was the high point of my week if I could do it in front of the rest of the class. I managed it quite a few times, and so he grew to hate me.

What on earth does this have to do with WMA I hear you ask.

Well it's simple.

I hate people that can't admit that they may be wrong.

We are recreating lost arts from historical texts. There is no direct lineage, and there are no masters, so anyone who won't admit that they might not have all the facts is either a fool, or a conman.

Possibly both.

The great thing is that, if you only let it, this becomes your biggest strength. You don't have all the facts, and so you better yourselves and your martial abilities by constantly striving to improve your understanding. Every facet of every interpretation is tested to the extreme, and then tested again. Every single technique is shown to work or it is abandoned and you go back to the drawing board.

If however you choose to stop questioning and start to believe that you have all the answers then you have failed. You have no masters, no direct lineage and no desire to better yourselves. You have nothing.

You might think that it makes you look as if you are a master in your own right, but to the rest of us who are still learning, questioning and growing, it makes you look nothing more than a spoilt child who can't bear to be proved wrong in front of other people.

Much like my old teacher.

He got away with it because he was a washed up old cynic who never taught anything more important than high school biology.

I'm aiming for something better.

How about you?