To Making Friends with Stuff

              Human beings are animals that use tools, so they usually move with stuff not only in daily lives but also sports and artistic activities.

 In these cases, we need to be familiar with the stuff. I call this work, becoming familiar with the stuff, “making friends with the stuff.” For example, imagine when you use chopsticks. When you hold chopsticks by the dominant hand, you can move them as a part of your body without special care. This is the state “you and the chopsticks are friends”. On the other hand, if you hold them with your opposite hand (or in case you are not good at using them), that oneness will disappear. In other word, you and the chopsticks are in the relation of “the primary and the subordinate”. This is the state “you and the chopsticks are not friends.”

By the way, what I have tried to make friends with is wooden sword. I’ll state what I noticed while I have gotten along with a wooden sword.

Three conditions of “making friends with a wooden sword” are

1, I must be independent

2, I must be conscious to not parts of it but the entire

3, The relation between I and it must be not one-sided but interaction

              First, I must be independent. When you hold a sword, you tend to focus on only holding it and be careless that “you are standing”. So, you should care about yourself standing stably on the ground. It is better to prepare for moving to anywhere anytime with a moderate strain.

              Second, I must be conscious to not parts of it but the entire. If you are not used to hold long object like a sword, it is usual to chafe the floor or the ceiling with the tip of it because you cannot grasp the real length. If you stand and hold it with being conscious from the root to the tip, your body will be stabled only because of it. Condition1 and 2 are compatible.

              Finally, the relation between I and it must be not one-sided but interaction. When you hold and move a sword several minutes, the relation gradually becomes “the primary and the subordinate”. From “you and the sword move (S-Vi)” to “you move the sword (S-Vt-O)”.

              In this kind of case, you should hold the sword again. The movement that will appear is active (you grasp the sword) and simultaneously passive (the sword comes into your hands and changes the shape of your hands). Keeping this sense, you can taste a strange move that “I move the sword but simultaneously I am moved by a sword.”

              Looking back, there are several points that can be helpful in order to make friends with living human as well as a wooden sword. “Being independent”, “being conscious to entire”, and “interaction” are important to make friends in real life.

              Therefore, we should not look down on the ability to make friends with stuff. For example, I don’t think tennis players who throw their racket when they fail can be gentle. On the contrary, a person who treat stuff gently tend to be regarded as gentle. If every stuff has mind, it will take to gentle people rather than irritable people.

              I felt glad to find out that we can learn the skill to become gentle by swinging a wooden sword, a wild movement at first sight.