Bouncing Back: Three Lessons I Learned from Miyamoto Musashi

Since the beginning of the summer and the conclusion of my college career, I had been frantically searching for how to live an authentic life.

It’s a question that has been repeatedly answered by a variety of people: ministers, crafters, artists, philosophers of the modern era. Still, nothing that I was looking at was providing answers to my ultimate question — what was my path in life? Why was I floundering and stagnating? Going nowhere?

It’s easy to get lost in the music that comes from others. Other people’s music sounds enchanting, beautiful, and we often think that it’s the kind of music we should be making. We look at how masterfully some create their songs. We get caught up in the wonder and then conclude: “I’m nothing like them. They’re a master at their craft. I could never get to that point.”

This was the kind of nonsense I fed myself, and the kind of nonsense I heard from other people. I was holding myself up to others based on if I could imitate their passions and talents. The question is: do I really want to dance to the tunes of other people?

That was when I decided to make the choice to pursue martial arts again. I picked something I thought was extraordinary and different, but something I earnestly wanted to learn. I decided to pick up Japanese swordsmanship.

I had to confess to myself that I was intimidated. I had virtually no martial arts background, and here, I was going to pick up a sword. If I had no mastery over my own hands, how could I ever learn the discipline behind wielding a weapon?

But I wanted to learn swordsmanship. I wanted to learn it very badly, and I told myself that I was not going to let doubt dictate my life any longer. Imposter syndrome be damned, I was ready to give it my all.

In my pursuit of learning swordsmanship, I picked up the necessary materials from my instructor, a book on Eishin-Ryu techniques, and most importantly, a copy of Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings.

This book changed my life. It was instrumental in helping me understand the value of my new undertaking. I won’t bog you down with the details of who Musashi was. All you need to know is that he was an excellent swordsman, and undefeated in every duel he had. He was a bona fide warrior. You can read more about him on your own time.

And so, you’re screaming: get to the point! This is where it begins. Here were the three most important lessons I learned from swordsmanship and Musashi:

Do nothing which is of no use.

In his book, Musashi lays out a personal code for warriors in pursuit of “The Way.” Among many of these maxims he creates is the one you see above.

Powerful, caustic, and utilitarian. It’s an excellent quote to remember. Part of it is the fact that it’s short. The other part is: it’s a brutal call to the sacrifices that mastery of any particular craft or skill requires.

I did a lot of useless things before I began this process of self-actualization. I wasted days away on TV, my phone, and video games. These things have their place as idle pleasures for free time, but that’s precisely it — they’re idle pleasures. Not useful pleasures. Idle pleasures have an allotted time for them that is healthy and appropriate. Not all the time, not when there’s work to be done.

I was unemployed, undisciplined, and unwilling to pursue anything because I felt defeated. Lingering in that feeling of defeat was in fact, a thing of no use. It made me want to curl up and ignore the fact that I needed to get out there. I needed to chase what I wanted, not wait for the opportunity to come on its own time.

I started doing more useful things. I put more applications in by setting a goal for how many I needed to submit in a day. I dialed up the Navy Officer Recruiter in Philadelphia and set up meetings with her. I started to get myself in good physical shape. I decided that I didn’t want to ignore the chances at pursuing mastery that were laid out in front of me.

It may seem difficult at first, but all things are difficult at first.

This particular phrase was the most applicable. To this day in studying swordsmanship, I struggle with some basic elements. I struggle even more with complex ones. But that’s just the nature of the beast.

Practice is what undoes the difficulty, thread by thread. What was a tangled ball of yarn slowly becomes a more concrete, tangible, and easily understood series of strings put together. In the academy where I study swordsmanship, I saw my hard work pay off. Part-timers that didn’t take the practice seriously began to fall behind. I started to receive more specific forms of attention from instructors. I began to tidy up the small things that were holding me back from successfully performing a given technique.

It’s not like I’m a prodigy at this. I’m about as average of a learner as the next guy. But putting in the time and hard work is a transparent process. You know when you’re getting better. It’s like that with writing, too. My style became more defined. My projects were more fleshed out, detailed. I started taking in the feedback I received from others. When I was lacking inspiration, I read good books that informed my writing and improved it. The life of imitation that I sought was behind me.

Putting in the time and work was the real secret.

Know the principles of the crafts.

Whether it was swordsmanship or my writing, it became instrumental that I studied the principles of these skills. It’s the same as any other craft people care about. I was able to apply the necessity to study principles to other things, too. Running. Weightlifting. Getting through interviews. Knowing what to say and what not to say. Being an overall better person, really.

Every skill has principles behind it in which we learn how to articulate and express them. The better we understand these principles, the more competent we are at the skill. A good cook knows the principles of striking a balance in all her meals: the proper spices, the right temperature, and the best ingredients for the budget. A bodybuilder has to learn good nutrition, the proper amount of macros and not neglecting important micros. A runner needs to learn how to strike with his feet rather than drag them, that way he can last the whole run and doesn’t end up with shin splints.

It’s difficult. It’s exhausting. It feels like even with the simplest things, there’s a million little components that you have to follow. The tough part of it is that those little million pieces are not going away. They will remain there. It’s almost like each of them is taunting you because you don’t want to put in the work to address them.

For me, it ranged from extremely benign things to important things. The semicolon. Not leaving my feet in place when practicing with the sword. Not understanding how to make good copy for marketing materials. Getting over pain from weightlifting. Organizing my delivery van so I don’t spend every stop trying to undo the whirlwind of messy packages.

You know, that very relatable thing we all deal with.

But seriously. It applies to every craft. You have to put in the work and time. You need to get out there and engage with it, no matter how stupid you look to the people around you. Epictetus of Hierapolis once said “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

And that’s just the thing. As long as I’m improving and learning, not stagnating — I’m more than happy to look like an idiot.