Almost two thousand years ago, Catullus wrote these verses that would echo through the centuries:

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
(I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do so. I don’t know, but I feel it happening and I am torn apart).

Catullus could never have imagined that his words would travel through time and reach us today. Even with his talent and imagination, he would not have expected them to be spoken by an Aikido practitioner to describe the essence of practice.

Right now, we are collecting small personal reflections from some of our adult group students-short clips that help make Aikido more communicable, more understandable to the public. This initiative, born within the Evolutionary Aikido Community, has a clear and positive side effect: it helps us see our companions from a new perspective.

One student described Aikido, the practice itself, in two words: Love and Hate.

Love, because training is beautiful-it allows you to learn, grow, discover, and connect with many dimensions that were previously overlooked or unknown.

Hate, because practice activates a process that forces you to come into contact with your own shadows, and those of others.

Thinking about Aikido through the lens of love can be helpful, because it allows us to better understand the duality that permeates our existence – Aikido -and the seasons of practice.

There is an initial season, a kind of childhood. Everything is new, and although everything feels difficult and unclear, enthusiasm prevails. Like a child who feels a mother’s love and instinctively responds with big smiles and affection – because that’s all they know (usually).

Then comes adolescence, sometimes a prolonged one. A time of friendships, crushes, and fleeting passions that fade like summer romances. It’s a phase of experimentation, of attraction between opposites, of chaotic emotions that need frameworks to be understood. This is the season of love and hate (which is why Catullus always resonates with teenagers). There are sessions where everything flows, you understand everything, and you feel like you’re touching the sky. Other times, you want to unscrew your training partner’s head. Sometimes you count the hours until the next practice. Sometimes it feels like your teacher doesn’t understand you or give you what you need.

Then there is maturity, when you experience a “we” in which the duality of two “I”s converges into a shared path. A duality that reflects itself dynamically and constantly, without giving up on its distinct identities. But when this dynamic turns into a psychological mechanism called “fusion,” problems begin. The shared project starts to reflect just one of the two people, and the other inevitably feels suffocated- bringing the couple back into an adolescent phase.
Mature practice finds a goal for growth that stands above personal polarities. Precisely because it sees and accepts limits -its own, those of partners, those of teachers—it creates space to move toward development. Toward meaning in practice.
This is when the “reasons why” are laid bare. Every reason for stepping on the tatami is tested by reality and purpose.

And when those reasons haven’t been gradually explored, questioned, and consolidated during childhood and adolescence -during one’s “engagement” with Aikido- they inevitably lead to crisis.

Finally, in the arc of love, there is fertility and gradual detachment.

A love that knows how to integrate opposites is fertile and generative. It becomes capable not only of self-care but also of caring for others—who are born, physically or otherwise, from the relationships love creates.

A practitioner who doesn’t know how to attract and care for others-beyond their direct training group-must eventually ask themselves some serious questions.

An experienced practitioner who never steps outside the boundaries of their small, familiar circle should, at some point, ask themselves some serious questions.

A teacher who keeps everything for themselves and never initiates their students into the path of teaching…what kind of teacher is that?

And, as in the most enduring love stories, time eventually brings the falling of leaves. One always falls first, while the other waits to follow.

The practice we’re used to cannot remain the same forever. The time comes—if not to end it—to transform it. Because of physical limitations, availability, or shifting meaning. And sometimes, because it’s time to make space for others.

Will we know how to do this constructively?

Or will we end our training days caught in love and hate, like so many who never truly outgrew their own adolescence?

Disclaimer Picture by Designecologist from Pexels