Getting back to our activities is always a particular moment. Not only in Martial Arts.

Returning to a routine; coming home from holidays spent away from home, or simply “somewhere else” compared with our usual habits; moving from freely managed time to time framed by work, study, and everything that is a “duty”…

It isn’t easy, even when starting again means having the curiosity and enthusiasm to dive back into everyday activities which, fortunately, are not necessarily always monotonous and demanding. Quite the opposite.

We are lucky enough to be able to observe the impact of coming back -even on the tatami– across all age groups. During this first week after the holidays, we have noticed that, regardless of age, the attitude with which people start again is the same. A mix of curiosity, enthusiasm, and the desire to return to a habit that has by now become an integral part of the week.

In other words, there are reasons why people come back to step onto the tatami. Everyone has their own, more or less explicit and conscious. You cannot, after all, put the reasons of an adult on the same level as the motivations of a six-year-old child. Not because the child doesn’t have any-quite the opposite.

A child who, at the beginning of September, finds themselves suddenly catapulted from the seaside back into the town, perhaps starting a new school year and being directed by their parents, with the very best intentions, onto a tatami, may initially feel disoriented.

Generally, the environment, the presence of other children having fun, the relaxed atmosphere, and curiosity take over. More rarely, some children experience a small crying episode -the unpredictable result of a mixture of fears, feelings of abandonment, being accustomed to being the exclusive focus of attention of all the adults around them, and who knows what other factors.

It is common experience that the same proposition can produce different results in two individuals. So, a good teacher is someone who can offer both the group and the individual, at the same time, a tool with which to undertake a meaningful journey.

This is why, although it is not easy, it is much simpler for a teacher to limit themselves to offering a technical path rather than structuring a trajectory that, through technique -serious, clear, measurable technique—also leads to the integral development of the person.

It therefore becomes necessary to encourage dialogue, at a level and with content that is possible and appropriate for the people in front of us. After all, Aikido, just like any Martial Art, is impossible without relationships -with one’s training partner, and therefore with the group, with the instructor, and with oneself. Without encouraging continuous and useful feedback, the journey on the tatami risks becoming dangerously self-referential.

Unfortunately –and fortunately- there is no rule or instruction manual. Everyone has their own character and sensitivities. There is the quiet one and the one who would keep talking even after death. The one who tells jokes and the very serious one. The more rational one and the more artistic one. And so on.

It applies to every age group.

And yet there is also that person -the one who actually does things.

The one who is there.

The one who, when you ask the group a question, never answers.

And who, after everyone has contributed something, whatever the question may have been, replies with a laconic and pained:

Dunno

— What do you feel when you take a fall?
Dunno.

— What does it feel like to apply a joint lock, knowing that you are choosing not to break your partner’s wrist?
Dunno.

— Did you notice that the exercise asked you to move to the right, but you went to the left?
Dunno.

It happens especially with teenagers -and if we remember what we were like as teenagers, we should have the intellectual honesty to remember that with some friends we were a river of words, while with others, perhaps at home, we would lapse into a selective mutism made up of “Yes,” “No,” and “Dunno.”

And yet, thanks to those who refused to resign themselves to getting evasive answers from us, we grew up. In spite of everything, and in spite of ourselves.

So, we believe that Aikido is an excellent training ground for giving up the—not-so-convenient—shortcut of “Dunno,” while being equally aware that the Martial Arts environment, when experienced without instructors and training partners who encourage a search for meaning, can become a place where one simply stops thinking.

And that is never a particularly good idea.

If those “dunnos” are not addressed competently, they remain. And they grow into adults who are incapable of making decisions. Of thinking independently. Of taking responsibility. Of understanding that life can be lived by choice rather than by inertia.

And you -when do you answer “Dunno”?

Disclaimer: Picture by Kaboompics from Pexels