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I have just pinpointed the transformational theme of my karate journey would not do justice to what happened: it exploded in my head! The brutal overwhelming violence of the emotion has only started to recede…

My neighbor on this flight to Singapore is a young man in his late twenties. He is a Chinese ethnic from Singapore. He mentioned being involved with the design and manufacturing of ship anchors, but until then, he looked more to me like a computer whiz of sorts. He was shivering in the cold of Shanghai; indeed it was snowing yesterday, he must be happy to return home to ‘sunny Singapore’.

I was thinking about Greece a while earlier and drifted from today’s financial crisis to ancient Sparta; I wondered how a mob of citizens on a rampage, breaking the treasures of their own nation to entice foreigners to rescue them would be dealt with in the glory days of Leonidas? I do not know, for sure, but I can imagine…

Why did I think of Sparta in the first place?

“The War Of Art” & Steven Pressfield who is also the author of “Gates Of Fire” took me there. This morning, in preparation of this trip, I grabbed the book from the neglected part of my collection, thinking that today was as good as any to make good on my decision to read it… If I am to write a blog, I might as well read a book on creativity & the overcoming of writer’s block.

“Gates Of Fire” was a favorite novel of mine way before “The 300’s”, the movie. It is an epic re-count of the battle of Thermopylae, from the eyes of a Helot, a Spartan slave. Pressfield uses the Spartan knight Polynikes’ explorations of the nature of Phobos, The Fear in Greek, as a recurring theme and sub plot in his book.

So here I am at 10,000m of altitude, next to a ship anchor geek, in an Airbus A300 from China Eartern Airways that has seen much better days, trying to make sense of what just flashed through my mind and knocked my wind out; thinking about Greece, then taken to Sparta, then fear… The introspective Spartan Ploynikes, at the end of Pressfield’s novel finally understands before dying that “love is the contrary of fear”. The first step on the road of my karate journey reveals love to be its theme…

As of right now, I sure don’t understand what is happening, I just know it is; hang around, Dear Reader, as the dust settles and we progress along the way, as the pages unfold, we’ll see and discover together where this is taking us.