who knows the heart of the sea who knows its depths and as I read that I wondered
to myself are we just the little fishes
abandoning ourselves to the waves to sing and dance and play is that what
we're doing and I'm not saying don't have fun I'm not saying don't sing and
dance and play enjoy life of course and relish the joy of life but I think you
have to make sure you don't dance your life away don't be one of the little
fishes and in doc odo that final writing of Musashi before he died the last thing
he wrote was never stray from the way
and I think that that's what this is about all the fun and the singing and
the dancing and all the play it's okay it's good
but all those things can be distractions
because there is a path there is a way
and you know what that way is you know what you should be doing and it's hard
to stay on that path because it is the path of discipline and discomfort but it
is the right path and you know that and it is that path that will ultimately
lead you to where you really want to be
so that you can live
and you can die without regrets
I think a lot of times people are trying to find the path then they're looking
all around different places and different people and different
influences but man I think so often that path you know what the path is and
people know what they're supposed to be doing but they just don't get on the
path and stay on the path yeah I agree worth something they felt when they were
8 or 12 and they they travel the world or travel through life's experiences
trying to find the answer that was in front of them the entire time and so
they come back to see what they knew with different eyes and to recognize
that they knew the path all along which is something that I so enjoyed about
this book and the character both real and certainly presented by the author of
Musashi who is using his experiences in this domain of the sword as a means of a
thematic interconnectedness and so unlike Cisco judo at the end he is not
just the technician with the sword although he is a brilliant technician he
is tilling the soil he's constructing buildings which later he did quite a lot
of in terms of architecture and overseeing the building instead of
destruction of things and finding at the highest levels of performance with the
sword in felling opponents the the principles the first principles that he
can apply everywhere and that's part of what fascinates me so much about Musashi
or anyone who's the best at what they do is that it could be anything it could be
pottery it could be sniping it could be
calligraphy but like the best they see the depth
they see the the interwoven web that can expand from that one fine focus into
everything that they do and I think that for me at least is the path and maybe
it's just coming off of a silent retreat that I want to talk this way but it
doesn't strike me is something that is cleanly expressed in an Instagram post
or quote necessarily it's it's more of a feeling like you know if you're sober
and take a moment to sit and the stillness and that by stillness I don't
mean sitting on a mountaintop it could just be five minutes of silence when you
first get up in the morning and observe your own mind and how you feel like you
know if you're on the path or not or at least you know when you're not I totally
agree you know you know when you're not on it
and I think that the feeling of being on it when you're on the path it has that
beauty of mindlessness or no mind as what they would say and say then the
state of no-mind and it sounds like unconscious but it's different it's not
unconscious it's not subconscious it's something else where you feel that
you're exactly where you should be doing exactly what you should be doing and
you're not planning you're just putting one foot in front of the other on this
path that you didn't have to find because in a way the path was seeking
you the whole time and it's just a feeling it's a really it's a feeling I
think that everyone can have but they get so caught up we all get caught up on
I want to speak for you to find gents I'll speak for myself it's it's easy to
get caught up in the noise and the shiny objects and just like the little fish
you were talking about earlier okay you see that lure to recognize it as a lure
is sort of the first step and then to realize that when you look
past the lure all right there's a lure 16 inches in front of you and then
you're in an ocean that has endless fathoms of depth what a journey