Teaching, first of all, is receiving.
When you have the privilege to be in contact with children, it often happens that you receive some gift from them.
A drawing (where that “thing” with very long legs and black pants is you, next to children drawn with a thousand colors). Two candies. A colored pencil.
These are beautiful moments, which repay so much effort. The same effort that every child experiences in his/her inevitable growth path.
However, we had never received an apple. Moreover from a teenager who came to try Aikido.
This boy showed up, introduced himself and took a red apple out of his pocket.
“For you,” he says. With simplicity.
After all, without apples, there would not have been some turning points in human history.
What would have happened to Adam and Eve, without the forbidden fruit?
We would not have had William Tell and not even Newton would have had the intuition regarding the force of gravity.
And what about the well-known brand of smartphones and computers?
In our small world, it seems that Morihei Ueshiba said that, in order to practice Aikido, all you need is the force needed to hold…an apple.
It is a sentence that has always struck us and that we often use to remind ourselves and the people who we are responsible of, that we can do without using that load of force that, unknowingly, we put into the execution of techniques.
But we had never considered it in its complementary, internal component. We could say: we had never thought that this sentence could have its “ura” version. After all, we should have expected it, being from the Founder of Aikido.
When I hold an apple in my hand, I can eat it or offer it.
Conceiving the use of power in its gentle, soft, open aspect towards others.
This too, above all, this is Aikido and requires considerable effort for the many of us who have forgotten that we are children grown up.
Disclaimer: Picture by Bonnie Kittle from Unsplash