Excuse me, was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes…

During middle school I was in an all-boys section and some claimed that these crazy sentences worked to impress girls. I had dismissed all of this as that kind of absurd attitudes -and terribly annoying both to be received and to be listened to- that only find space during puberty.

Until, recently, I heard it again, used in a real conversation. With a very predictable result: a look of annoyance and incredulity that cut off any possibility for the young Casanova trained at the University of Ugliness.

September is coming and as the gradual resumption of activities starts, the Martial Arts courses also start again.

Trying to look at “our” world as if with an external camera, as far as communication is concerned, a single, enormous doubt arises.

Isn’t it the case that we try to attract the audience with a kind of passionate communication as much as telling a girl: “Excuse me, was your father a thief”?

Why should a guy outside the world of Martial Arts be interested in something that is often communicated in an obscure way? With a language often full of incomprehensible terms? With improvised visual content and often with still images of elderly people that represent the height of stillness?

And if this guy were to ever watch a few videos on various platforms, how could he/she react to a flood of hagiographic videos of this or that founder? What could he/she conclude after watching videos in which John Doe who practices discipline X becomes a mudslinger towards discipline Y and therefore speaks ill of Jane Doe?

What could he/she conclude after a few self-defense clips in which you see everything and the opposite of everything?

The interest that a person can trigger on another and that perhaps gives rise to a relationship is an alchemy that is based on a mix of originality and creativity. Something that makes a person unique.

Thinking of making a discipline interesting by flooding the web with very long content; writing that those who practice Karate, Judo or Aikido, all arts born between the 19th and 20th centuries, practice the disciplines of the ancient samurai; posting random pictures of Japanese or Chinese people with quotes and kanji…

…All this is equivalent to trying to make yourself interesting in front of someone by continuing to recite from memory a script made up of sentences from fortune cookies. And it is a bit useless to complain if you then fail to capture a broad interest.

Even before it is a matter of competence in the communications sector, a factor that is a problem in any case and not only in the small world of Martial Arts, it is a matter of originality.

A genuine passion that is sincerely cultivated day after day becomes capable of igniting enthusiasm around itself. In other words: if there is true and continuous enthusiasm inside, it also shows on the outside.

Otherwise, since sooner or later everyone dates with a girl or a boy, you end up having to pick up from the basket of banality:

“Excuse me, was your Sensei a thief”?

Disclaimer: Picture by Yan Krukau from Pexels