Is Personal Growth Really Its Own Reward?

My recently broken fingers are coming back to haunt me.  I can't take a
nikkyo properly.  Though my pulled hamstring doesn't bother me as much
as I thought it would.  I also tore my rotator cuff a few years ago,
still makes many movements painful.  I could go on...

What is it about us aikidoka that we buy in to the idea of suffering and
pain as the primary method of personal growth?  I don't think it has to
be or should be that.  Of course, challenges and frustrations are
important to learning and growing, but constant frustration?  Constantly
being told what you are doing wrong?  Developing injuries that are life
long?  Various injuries ache, and I approach each class with a
fatalistic resignation. Of course, once we start practicing, I enjoy it,
but I can't help feeling caught wrecking my body to learn things (even
the non-physical ones) that I will rarely use.  Yes I want to confront
behaviors and fears from my past, and I want to learn to deal with
conflict, but I think there may be better methods.

I suffer from a strange duality where I don't want to be pounded on and
constantly lorded over by my Sensei, but I wish I had more people my age
in classes so that I could be rougher in my training in general.
Tonight I was the only student under 40.  And I am a long way under 40.
Of course all of these people have injuries and have moved on to more
calm and measured training, so there isn't much in the way of really
going at it with each other.  So I want more intense training but I
complain about the intensity.  Go figure.

In the Beginning

This whole blog will probably fly in the face of the Aikido community. I am not here to hide my pain and humiliation behind a facade of honor, bravado, or spiritual advancement. I am here to show the heartbreak, destruction, and overwhelming sense of loneliness that accompanies being an apprentice student to a Sensei. I hope my words help others.

Today my Sensei told me that he was going to give me his old hakama, and that he is going to be creating an apprenticeship program that I should take part it. I have been an informal kenshusei now for almost a year, and it looks like it will be formalized soon. I am honored that he is going to be giving me his hakama, I must be an important part of his life. And yet, its just another way in which I feel that I am losing my entire life to Aikido.

The expectations of the Aikido world seem more and more absurd to me. God forbid that I miss a class because I would like to spend time with people I value. Aikido is supposed to involve a high level of commitment, but it also requires that you give up some measure of your adulthood. In becoming a special student to a Sensei, you loose autonomy and trust. Your decisions are no longer yours to make. If the Sensei thinks that you should be at class, then you should be at class. If you committed to staying at the dojo for a time, then you should take whatever job necessary to ensure that.

In essence, you say something like "Please let me pay to be guilt tripped into spending a significant portion of my life being told how I do something wrong."

Of course, this is over dramatized, since it is my own decision to be in the situation, and I could certainly leave it. But the thing with Aikido is that at some point you can't imagine your life without it. It may be achingly painful, and may estrange all your friends, but you can't give it up.