Day 9, Thursday: A moment in your day (this can be just a photo or both a photo and words)
Heading out the door, 5:30 a.m.
Even for a non-morning person like me, there's something special about waking up with the sun. Two times a week, I wake up early to attend aikido class. It amuses me that when I was working, the earliest I could bear to get out of bed was 5:45 a.m.,while now I consistently get up 45 minutes earlier for something non-work-related. I think that's the key here: there's a sense of play and choice, not work and obligation. This is not to say that studying a martial art is play - it's a lot of hard work, frustration, and discipline. But at the same time, a special kind of camaraderie grows between people who choose to spend time together on the mat. We all first step onto the mat for different reasons - some are seeking spiritual guidance, some are seeking self-defense techniques, and some, like me just about a decade ago, aren't sure what they're in search of -- the search is the point. While we are all looking for something different, we are traveling along the same path (the "do" in aikido can be translated as "path" or "way"), and that's something worth waking up early for.
