"Immersion in the life of the world, a willingness to be inhabited by and to speak for others, including those beyond the realm of the human, these are the practices not just of the bodhisattva but of the writer." --Jane Hirshfield

Thursday, February 15, 2007

You Can Probably Beat Me Up

That's a variation of what every man I meet eventually says to me, since I've been practicing martial arts for so long. (I suppose this could have been a Valentine's Day post.) Sometimes it's in the form of a question, "Could you beat me up?" To which I either reply, "only if I have to," or "only if you want me to," depending on the questioner. Women never ask, from which I deduce that men never really leave the schoolyard, forever mentally classifying the other kids into "I can beat him up/he can beat me up" categories.

3 comments:

evening1 said...

Ouch, just by mentioning the above you kicked all of our collective male behinds! 8^)

Zen of Writing said...

But do guys really classify each other that way, or is it my martial arts practice that brings up the question?

evening1 said...

It is a guy thing but it operates at a more-or-less subconscious level, buried deep in all of that evolutionary psychology and dominance behavior.