Looking to the North Star
— On Life as a Voyage
[Excerpt]
This is an excerpt from my essay currently in progress, “Looking to the North Star — On Life as a Voyage.”
The full version will be revised and expanded, and is planned for publication and sale soon as a short guidebook on budo and life.
Some time ago, on Father’s Day, I wrote a short poem about my father.
At first, I meant to write about my gratitude toward him.
But as I wrote, that gratitude did not remain directed toward my father alone.
It spread to the teachers who guided me.
To the friends who walked beside me.
To those who supported me when I was struggling.
To my wife.
And to the rivals who helped polish and shape my heart.
To all those whom I have encountered through the bonds and circumstances of life.
My gratitude toward my father gradually became gratitude toward all the people who have been part of my life.
Looking back now, I feel that this short poem may already have contained the beginnings of what I have come to think about life today.
About fifteen years ago, my father became seriously ill, and since then he has been unable to use one side of his body freely.
When I was a child, he often took me in his car to the mountains, rivers, and sea.
I loved riding in the car while my father drove.
When I entered adolescence and seemed in danger of losing my way, he did not try to control me through force.
At times he could be demanding and outspoken, but when I was truly suffering, he often chose simply to remain nearby and watch over me.
At the time, I did not fully understand how much that meant.
Only after becoming a parent myself, and learning what it means to worry about a child’s future, have I begun to understand something of what my father must have felt.
And now, that father has grown old.
One by one, the teachers from whom I learned in my younger days have also passed away.
I have also begun to feel aging and physical decline in my own body.
When I was young, death seemed very far away.
Now it feels far closer than it once did.
That does not mean that I have simply become afraid of death.
Rather, I have come to feel much more clearly that life has an end.
And because of that, I find myself asking:
How should I live the time that remains to me?
Living a human life seems to me, in some ways, like sailing a ship across the sea.
Each of us sets out with destinations of our own.
Success.
Victory.
Strength.
Prosperity.
Work.
Family.
Dreams.
The destination need not be the same for everyone.
Indeed, having a destination may be what gives us the courage to launch our ship and face rough waters.
That was true for me as well.
I entered the world of martial arts and combat sports seeking strength, victory, and the realization of my own ideals.
But life does not unfold according to the chart we first draw.
There are harbors we reach.
Harbors we never reach.
Sometimes the destination itself changes.
Sometimes storms come, and we lose our sense of direction.
And above all, no one knows when the voyage of life will end.
Death is not the final harbor toward which we deliberately sail.
The voyage may end while we are still on our way toward some destination.
For that reason, I no longer believe that the value of a life can be measured only by what a person has accomplished.
Did I succeed?
Did I win?
Did I fulfill my dream?
These things matter.
But perhaps something matters even more:
Until the voyage ends, can I continue to live while facing a direction that I would not be ashamed of as a human being?
Of course, human beings make mistakes.
I myself have surely lost my direction many times.
What matters is not never making a mistake.
What matters is whether, when we realize we are heading the wrong way, we can face that fact and turn the rudder again.
For that, perhaps human life also needs a North Star.
The North Star is not a destination.
We do not sail toward it in order to arrive there.
Where we choose to go is for each of us to decide.
But in order to know where we are and which direction we are facing, we need some point of reference.
I believe life is much the same.
What we seek in life is ours to decide.
But along the way, we still need some standard by which to ask:
Am I moving in the right direction as a human being?
For much of my life, I have thought about budo.
What is strength?
What does it mean to win?
What is rei, or respect and proper conduct?
What is budo itself?
At the same time, I have long felt both attraction and unease toward the word budoka — “martial artist.”
About thirty years ago, I began to think about the word Budojin.
At that time, I could not explain its meaning as clearly as I can now.
I simply felt that the word budoka alone did not fully express the kind of human being I was seeking to become.
Today, I do not see Budojin as a new title.
Nor does it mean someone superior to a martial artist.
For me, it is a word that helps preserve a question:
As one human being who has studied budo, how should I live?
That is why I now feel less concerned with completing myself as a “martial artist,” and more concerned with living as
one Budojin.
If I realize that I have lost my direction, I want to look once again toward the North Star.
And then I want to adjust the rudder.
No one knows when the voyage of life will end.
That is precisely why, until the very end, I want to keep facing a direction I need not be ashamed of as a human being.
As one Budojin.
And as one human being.
About This Essay
This text is an excerpt from my essay currently in progress:
“Looking to the North Star — On Life as a Voyage.”
The complete version explores in greater depth my memories of my father, thoughts on aging and death, life as a voyage, the idea of the North Star, and the personal reflections that led me from the idea of the budoka to the concept of the Budojin.
The full text is planned for publication and sale soon as a short guidebook on budo and life.
I hope it may be of interest not only to those who practice martial arts, but also to anyone who finds themselves asking:
“What am I living toward?”
and
“What can I use to check the direction of my life?”
