On the Nature of Kung Fu Brotherhood

After years of jumping aimlessly from style to style, after wasting a decade pursuing the “short attention-span theater” approach to the martial arts with little more than a well-worn yellow belt in Karate and an extensive library to show for it, I discovered Kung Fu.  It was Kung Fu that allowed me to realize my full potential as a martial artist… but only because of the effort of another teacher.  That instructor is my friend David Pearson, for without his instruction and his full-contact preparation, I’d have walked out of my first commercial Kung Fu school after only a day.

Dave has been my friend for what must be a decade and a half.  He’s always been supportive.  He’s never been disrespectful.  When he thought I was making — or had made — a mistake, he said so.  When he was proud of something I’d accomplished, he offered praise.  His family essentially adopted me, and there is no way I will ever be able to express my gratitude to him and to them.  Dave remains, to this day, my best friend on Earth.  There aren’t too many best friends (or maybe there are) who hold the distinction of being the first person who ever hit you in the face hard enough to make you see stars.  I suppose to those who do not understand the nature of Kung Fu brotherhood, my gratitude for that punch — the first of many — might seem strange.  I know Dave understands this; I doubt many others who are not also martial artists ever will.

It is with a heavy heart that I write today on the nature of Kung Fu brotherhood.  When we lose a friend, if we are not heartless, it is troubling.  When we lose a brother, it grieves us that much more.  This is not simply because of the betrayal intrinsic to a broken friendship of this type.  It is also thanks to the investment of  time, trust, and exposure of our innermost selves.  A Kung Fu brother — a fellow student or a teacher — sees a part of you that few other people ever do.  When a Kung Fu brother chooses to part ways with you, you feel at first loss and disappointment… but then fear, as you realize just how dangerous a potential enemy has been born of that break.

Writing is exorcism.  “There is nothing to writing,” said Ernest Hemingway.  “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”  There have been a few times in my life when a subject so important, an opportunity so significant, prompted me to reach deeply into my own life, to “bleed” on my keyboard as I picture Hemingway doing on his typewriter.  When I wrote an essay for Paladin Press’ Warriors: On Living with Courage, Discipline, and Honor, for example, I was so grateful for the opportunity that I knew I owed them a truly self-critical, truly introspective piece. That is what I tried to bleed for them.

It was in this spirit that I wrote my weekly WorldNetDaily column last week.  In that case, because my column deals with technology and society, I thought the loss of a Kung Fu brother made a good point of inspiration for the column as a whole.  I learned of the loss not through a face-to-face argument, not through a phone call between men, and not through another friend’s words… but through Facebook, where the sudden disappearance of my Kung Fu brother from my “friends list” signaled that I had become a virtual “unperson” to him.

I wrote in the WND column that for a long time, my friend had become increasingly distant.  He was dealing with issues of his own, but he was also becoming extremely critical and very arrogant.  I tried to tell him several times that this was a problem; on one occasion, he responded simply by mocking me.  I let a lot of this behavior slide, sighing to myself, and of course I am not perfect; there were plenty of things I do and did that I’m know my friend found annoying.

Finally, he said something so dismissive and insulting that I didn’t talk to him for a couple of days.  I told myself that when I cooled off I would need to make a decision about our friendship.  I was reluctant to do anything permanent; I did not want to just write him off.  But allowing someone to be so negative and critical of me is in direct opposition to the philosophy I espouse, as is allowing someone repeatedly to show me disrespect.  Were someone in my situation to describe the same pattern of behavior, I would have advised what I was told repeatedly: “You cannot expect this to change… and you’re going to have to do something about it.”

My friend beat me to it, later saying he was simply ridding himself of “negative dead weight.”  He called me “delusional” and accused me of “calling him out” even though my work did not name him.  He rambled through a list of petty grievances I had no idea he still held — complaints that seemed distorted in the retelling and for which, in some cases, I had even apologized.  He ended his tirade with a veiled threat, leaving me astonished at the many resentments he still harbored.

His words raised many questions, but they did explain why it was that, while I grappled with the decision of how to deal with our friendship, he simply started clicking mouse buttons. Now I can only watch from a distance as he continues on a path, on a pattern of behavior, that isolates him from those who care about him. It is a path that may ultimately destroy him… but he dismisses my concerns as “projection” while accusing me of the negativity that seems so deeply to characterize him now.

Years ago, I was introduced to Kung Fu by another Kung Fu brother, Kevin.  Kevin, who will always be my senior student in Liu Seong Gung Fu, introduced me to our Sifu.  At the time I was training in Wing Chun Kung Fu, and Kevin was cross-training with me.  I originally went to see Sifu Dan Donzella as a way of returning the favor to Kevin.  I discovered a system that I liked better than Wing Chun, and of course it is that system in which I hold a black sash today.

A few months into my training with Kevin and Sifu Dan, Kevin — a coworker at the time — took me aside and asked me if I was going to misuse what I was learning.  I had said something in The Martialist that he misinterpreted, and he was worried.  Out of a sense of responsibility to our teacher, he confronted me.  Had anyone else spoken to me that way, I’d have told them to go to Hell.  Because it was Kevin, I listened… and when he was finished, I laughed, explained to him why he was mistaken, and said, “I thought you knew me better than that, Kevin.”  I respected his effort to show respect to our teacher and the art we shared, and I value him as a Kung Fu brother to this day.

The friend I lost, the friend about whom I wrote in my WND column, shared a similar distinction.  I introduced him to Sifu Dan because I believed in him and respected him.  I vouched for him in sharing with him both my martial and social lives.  This was not easy for me at the time, for I had been burned before; when I left Wing Chun Kung Fu, my instructor resented my decision and made false, negative public statements about me that live on the Internet to this day.

You, as martial artist and as friend to others, will experience these same relationships.  You will learn from students and teachers.  You will be grateful.  You will lose friends and perhaps you will lose or leave teachers.  You may be betrayed.  You may come to know the loss and possibly the fear that is seeing an honest friend transformed into a wounded enemy… or you may become that wounded enemy yourself.  The experience is common to any who forge these ties — ties that are so important to us as students of self-defense and of martial science because they speak directly to who we are as people, to what we are capable of accomplishing in possibly life-and-death transactions.

If we are honest, if we give credit to those it is due, we do not entirely dismiss the friends we lose.  We are disappointed, yes.  We are saddened, even more so.  We worry, and we worry for them, knowing that no longer can we help someone who pushes away a hand offered in brotherhood, who sneers in contempt or even rewrites history when recounting the story of the friendship that has ended.  When our friends join the ranks of our critics — less-than-august company that should give those within its ranks pause to see the neighbors they now share — they do not cease to be, for us, even if we are less than people to them.

Kung Fu brotherhood is difficult to live because it is so positive.  If we have never felt the harsh gut-punches of its negative side, we forget that these betrayals, these failures, these disappointments can attack at any time.  Their occurrence is largely beyond our control because we are, as brothers (and sisters, in the case of the female students out there), at the mercy of the choices and the behavior of others.  We can only control what we do… and what we permit… as martial artists.  We can only draw and enforce our boundaries.  We can only defend ourselves to the best of our abilities.  Thus, Kung Fu brotherhood is both the environment in which we train and the medium through which we may be taught the harshest of lessons.

It is worth it, despite the price.