People are lazy. This is not an opinion; it is a scientific fact, as obvious as gravity or the existence of bad television. Give them a task requiring discipline, patience, and effort, and watch them wither like a houseplant in the hands of an absent-minded teenager.
Take meditation, for example. The practice is designed to cultivate inner peace and clarity. What do people do with it? They yawn, they fidget, they look at their watches as if enlightenment were a pizza delivery overdue. "It’s boring," they say, mistaking their own inability to sit still for a flaw in the practice. No, dear friends, meditation is not boring—you are simply too used to having the intellectual lifespan of a goldfish scrolling through cat videos.
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| Taisen Desshimaru brought Zen to Europe |
And then, let’s take Martial Arts, Karate for example, the martial art of discipline, respect and manners and - let’s be honest—the main reason most eight-year-olds enroll: the vague hope of becoming a ninja. But then, tragedy strikes. They discover that, before they can unleash a flying kick worthy of a Hollywood stuntman, they must first repeat the same basic movements a thousand times. Aghast, they cry out, "This isn’t fun!" No, of course not. If it were, it would be called "Karate: The Theme Park Ride" and come with a free balloon.
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| Katsuoh Yamamoto, founder of Yoshukai karate |
Now, let’s take this grand refusal of effort to its logical conclusion. Imagine, if you will, a group of young soldiers in basic training. They are learning to march, to follow orders, to react instinctively under pressure. But alas! They are bored. "Do we really have to practice this again?" they whine, as if the enemy would kindly pause mid-battle to let them refresh their memory. "This is repetitive," they complain, moments before getting shot because they never quite mastered the art of ducking. War, you see, is not tailored for those who lose interest when things get monotonous. The battlefield is not an amusement park; there are no snack breaks between bullets...
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The problem is not that training is boring. The problem is that we have raised entire generations who expect life to be a non-stop festival of entertainment. But real mastery—whether of the mind, the body, or the battlefield—requires effort, repetition, and the ability to endure boredom without dissolving into a puddle of existential despair.
So, dear reader, the next time you find yourself sighing at the tediousness of practice, remember this: somewhere out there, a soldier is drilling the same movement for the thousandth time, a pianist is playing the same scale again and again, and a true martial artist is perfecting a single strike until it becomes second nature. Meanwhile, you are bored. Perhaps the problem is not the practice. Perhaps the problem… is you.
