There are ghosts in the system - lingering remnants of lives lived, loves lost, and all-consuming bliss. Remnants that arise unpredictably in this moment, yet draw us back, not just in thought, but with an emotional potency that casts doubt on the significance of life today.
Nostalgia is beauty. It’s passion. It’s enveloping caress.
But it has a cost.
Don’t Stop to Admire Your Work
Sparring with a student yesterday, there was a moment where she made contact with a body shot. In the moments that followed she stalled, eyes wide, lips turning up… “holy shit, did that just happen?” …and left herself vulnerable to a flurry of incoming shots.
In training, focus doesn’t just imply intent, but also connection. Connection to nuance, novelty, and the dynamic flux of confrontation. Once cannot get stuck.
There will be moments of fear, hope, delight, frustration, doubt, curiosity, and of course, pain - the spectrum of emotion condensed and accelerated under pressure. Remaining connected to the flow is critical in order to allay the risk of missing reality unfolding before you.
Holding on - to failures OR SUCCESSES - is the problem.
The Bottling of Weightless Moments
If I am not my memories, who am I?
There’s implicit fear in the losing of joys and sorrows that once sustained us. Whether they were perceived good or bad they were meaningful, and the enduring self is fueled by a moving toward or a moving against memories, ideas, and impulses that comprise personal meaning.
The bottling of weightless moments is rarely intentional. But, my god, without remembering those moments of joy, caging them within safe, unbreachable walls so that the goodness that makes life worth suffering for isn’t lost, and in so doing, losing oneself, then what’s left?
There is no need to judge or abandon nostalgic moments, but it’s critical they don’t live on as standards of the good, defining us now and forever amidst uncertain futures. They must not become our possessors.
The love is good. The possession is the problem.
The Darkness in Lightness
I burned a book once…
…in my early twenties, living in the jungle of Koh Phangan, Thailand, while reconstructing the art of Lightness from the ground up. I had a handful of books in my possession, one of which, Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa, about the legendary swordsman who bested over 80 opponents in life-death challenges. It’s a beautifully inspiring read that pulls at all possible heart strings.
In those moments, watching Musashi crackle and smoke, I felt nauseous. Nazis burned books. Psychopaths destroy things because they’re beautiful. Watching those flames, I tasted the darkness meant for lightness. And in that moment I’d generated an equally insidious challenge - as I could not possess the inspiration and beauty of Musashi lest I risk being bound to static standard in time and place, now too must I work to non-attach to the guilt, the judgment of self, the dark reality that I could cross that line, and the familiarity with those I deem evil, that arose with those flames.
I didn’t burn it because I was afraid of it - it wasn’t subversive, dangerous, or ideologically confronting in the slightest. No… it was special - a strength of character, a purity of love, a courage unfathomable, a discipline borderline romantic, and a commitment to living life on your terms, no matter the cost.
And in the specialness of things there is reciprocal possession. There is possession by you over the thing, explicit or implicit, as you seek to live and relive the joy it brought, now and forever. And there is possession by the thing over you that endures as an elevated reference of goodness, against which all new experiences are measured.
And while measurement is a cornerstone of growth and performance, it is also death.
Measurement is a static portrait of the good that does not, and can not, account for imperfect yet perfectly complete present experiences.
Sublimity is Present
It isn’t the love of a thing that causes sorrow, but the loss of it.
Can you find space within for both the beauty of nostalgic regression as well as immersion in unscripted, overwhelmingly beautiful, present moments? Or does that love, that sunset, that moment of freedom, that vacation, that blissful coffee or chocolate cake, that look from your child… possess you, opening the door to sorrow in moments that follow?
Imagine, an integrated present that knows no loss of moments, no sorrow amidst nostalgia, because you’re not stopping to admire your work… YOU ARE YOUR WORK, and you’re still living.
Your life is as dynamic and vibrant as it was than, perhaps more so. And rather than moments of binding beauty arising through whimsical circumstance, they are designed through an integrated, resilient, and extraordinarily sensitive mind body.
This is the path of mind-body training. This is the path of Weightlessness.
Be Weightless,
Tom Fazio
Weightlessness | Mind Body Performance
P.S. Don't’ be an asshole, protect books, even the shitty ones.