What you Know

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"What you know; what you don't know; what you don't know you don't know"...a maxim written by a violence professional for self-defense defense. Note: This may not be the exact quote but you get the idea.

What we know, as karate-ka, often is of a biased nature. The sources depend on who came before us and what they brought to the dojo floor as to teachings, training and practices. Imagine when you first saw the movie where "Neo" first woke from his "womb-like" locker. He suddenly and with horror saw for the first time that something he didn't know, or realize, was that something he didn't know he didn't know and felt the emotional turmoil that this new knowledge provided. 

Neo literally came to the first crossroads of decision when presented with the two pills, the blue pill and the red pill. It was his first new understanding and a knowing he hadn't known before. He could take the red pill and go back into his biased dissonant life where it was safe, secure and familiar OR he could take the blue pill and open his mind to the vast know, unknown and unknown-unknown that would allow him to evolve and progress, literally, his life. 

This is the same choice we all have when we first enter the dojo be it karate or some other martial discipline, we are at a crossroads and we decide between the red pill or the blue. We can simply take what is presented to us and assume that is the extent of all knowledge and understanding, often the choice newbie’s take because of what they don’t know they don’t know. We can also take the other path and seek out not just what the sensei, senpai and kohai of the dojo present and we can absorb everything possible to reduce that which we don’t know and we don’t as yet know we don’t know. 

We can take the blue pill and allow both the logical and often the ridiculous and analyze it all to fill in the gaps, the huge blackness of the unknown-unknown, and fill them in gradually and fully as we travel a most difficult, but imagine the rewards received in the process, path. 

Take the blue pill! Know what you know; embrace the opportunity and open-mind of receipt of what you don’t know; then step into the vastiness of the black to learn about what you don’t know you don’t know. Imagine the thrills, excitement and evolutionary personal growth accumulated to a state of mastery you will get just by deciding. 

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