The evolution of motivation

I have done martial arts of one type or another my entire life. Martial arts has been the one constant in my life where everything else has changed. I could easily wax poetic and say my life has been a maelstrom of chaos of every sort of flotsam and jetsam imaginable with the one constant eye in the storm being my training.

I have not, however, trained for the same reasons my whole life. Last year this became a major area of contention in my psych and I thought a nervous breakdown or mid life crisis was going to over come my poor little mind and leave me a gibbering mass in the corner of a padded room. In the past my motivations changed and evolved seamlessly to the point of just being matters of introspection. (something I excel at)

As a child I trained because it was fun. What child needs more motivation than that?

When I hit my teens I trained for fights. (something else I excelled at) I recognized that when a fight occurred that one kid was often clearly the winner. On the scale of winning and loosing I have always favored the concept of winning. Given a choice, I still rather like winning over loosing. Its not as important to me as it was then but all else being equal, I remain partial to victory.

In my twenties I had a fine revelation about winning. The bigger the enemy the more satisfying the victory elation. This prompted me to change my motivations just a tad. Now I was preparing for something big.
It could have been any number of things really: Go to War, Find a good death stopping a robbery, Become a super hero like batman, Become an overseas merc, Become a super villain, Get in on a top notch criminal organization, Start my career as an international assassin, Kill people who cut down rain forest, Kill people who murder gorilla in North Africa, Hunt poachers on the lion reserve in South Africa, Work for the CIA, Abduct one of the MIB and force them to tell me whats in area 51, Become a survivalist leader after the nuclear apocalypse, ect.


In my thirties I was still waiting for...something. Then it hit me and I had a horrid revelation. NOTHING was going to happen. I was going to grow old and die a perfectly normal and average life with no big even to define its meaning. I was not going to die a good warriors death at all. I was going to age, have a kid, become everything I have always hated about adults, and die unnoticed. I am still struggling with this a little today.

Then last year the fog began to clear and I began to find a little solace while teaching at my gym. I found that my happiness on the mat was undiminished despite not having a warriors death to get ready for. I still loved to teach. I still loved the contact of wrestling and could still take pride in my sore and aching muscles the day after a workout. Slowly but surly I began to do things for the sake of doing them and not for some grand idea of how the skill would be used.

Today I train only for me. My enemy is age and the specter of ill health. I am fighting off bone brittleness and inflexibility. I train for my mental acuity and physical stability. I am training...to be and stay...young.