“What’s the next part of this form?” my instructor asked, swiveling his head around and looking straight at me. We had just passed what I call the “jazz hands” portion of Palgwe Sam-jang, the green belt form that we were reviewing that night.
“Ki-yahp and punch!” I shouted back. “No, wait! It’s THIS!!” I crowed triumphantly, whirled around to land in a deep front stance, and slammed down a low block with a sharp satisfied exhale.
“Is she right?” my instructor asked as everyone remained perched in a frozen back stance (except of course for me in all my front stance/low block glory). The other students furrowed their brows, looked down at the floor with embarrassment, and mumbled “Uh…maybe?”
“It’s THIS!” he said, turning to his right, shifting into a front stance, and popping up a high block. We all groaned.
“Oh so close!” I laughed and adjusted my arms.
My instructor trotted to the front of the room and said, “I heard a lot of ‘uh, maybes’ and ‘I don’t knows’ when I asked you if she was right. Commit to something! Don’t do things halfway, at least not in here. Being on the fence means you don’t have an opinion and you’re waiting to see how things work out. That’s OK in the short term, but in the long term it can be dangerous.” He shuffled his feet and straightened his knees into a weak imitation of a back stance.
“You see?” he said, opening his palms and spreading his fingers, “If your stances are halfway now you’ll develop bad habits, and they won’t be effective later.” He shifted back and forth between stances. “You need the strength of front stance,” he said as he sank into his right knee, “and the speed of back stance.” He shifted his weight to his back leg and raised his fists as if ready to spar. “Commit to your stance, even if it’s wrong! I’d rather see you do a wrong stance all the way than the right one halfway!”
I smiled and thought, “At least I was committed to my wrong low block!”
As he continued to weave through the lines of students, correcting stances and fine-tuning blocks I thought about the concept of commitment. Words can carry the weight of the world, but they can also be tossed around casually like pieces of meaningless garbage. I have been hurt both by taking someone’s words too seriously or not taking them seriously enough. A person’s true character can more often be seen through their actions. Do they follow through on their promises? Do they give and serve? Do they right what was wrong? Committed actions show that we have confidence in our opinions and the choices we’ve made.
The only time I’ve heard an example of how “being on the fence” was the the best choice was an old tale my grandma liked to tell about a distant uncle who was a child during the Civil War. He was leaning up against a fence, chewing on a piece of grass and looking at the clouds, when a posse of soldiers came barreling up the dirt road to his house.
“Boy, what side are you on?” the leader of the gang snarled.
“I’m not on any side” replied my relative slowly, shifting his weight on the wooden post. “I’m on my belly.”
