Be Not Afraid
April 17, 2008 by soonmethod
In the Summer of 1993, at age 16, I had the opportunity through a Catholic Church organization to travel to Madrid Spain to attend a Summer camp for young men, where they would spend the Summer studing English, playing sports and interacting with young men from the United States. It was one of the two most profound experiences of my life (both of which happened, cosmically in my belief, during the same Summer).
At 16 years of age, I was absolutely lost in a 24-hour cycle of day-dreaming and listless teen-spirit. I listened to Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Simon & Garfunkel, spent my free-time wandering around the streets of NYC looking for adventure and escape (from a very boring home-life) and read books by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. I was, in my mind, a real cosmopolitan hippie.
I was fencing at Salle Santelli and the Fencers Club during this time and met all kinds of characters through after-school activities, martial arts, and an after-school study program run by the Church organization I was attending. It was an amazing, crazy, yet very innocent time in my life because I was completely wide-eyed at all the experiences, all great experiences, that were opening up the doors to the universe for me.
I won’t go into too much detail of my trip to Spain, I’ve never thought much about it since it happened, but it was always the best experience from my youth. I spent the days hanging around really great kids, smoking, drinking wine, learning about their pop-culture, listening to music (U2 and Sting was popular at the time), watching the Tour de France (it was July and Miguel Indurain was the current champion) and hanging out at the Prado Museum on my day off (every Thursday).
One day I went into Madrid for the day with an 18 year old kid from Florida named Pablo… he was supposed to be my guide for the day (I do not speak a word of Spanish), but the minute our driver from the Church let us off the van and we were alone, he ditched me, so I was stuck in the middle of the city by myself. I had no map and no idea where I was or what I was going to do. I had enough money to buy lunch, that was it. This was before cell phones too and I didn’t have the phone number for the Summer camp either.
It was beautiful. I saw a Burger King and had lunch there, I had to point at the menu at the Whopper and the Fanta Naranja and papas fritas, and the cute girl taking my order couldn’t stop giggling at me. I loved the experience. I managed to ask my way to the Prado Museum at the end of the day, and after the museum closed I again had to ask my way to “Club Mizar”, the youth club for the Catholic group that was sponsoring me. I walked all over Madrid by myself that day, and learned so much about how kind people can be and how I was able to completely depend on myself, no matter what.
This wasn’t some profound lesson that sunk into my mind at the time either, I was a naive and vulnerable, got angry easily and didn’t have much self-confidence. But during those moments I had absolutely no doubt about what I was going to do, it was as if another side of me, the side that had to be assertive and confident, took over for me and I carried myself through those potentially nerve-wracking experiences with joy and fun.
When I returned home from Spain, I was invited to go as a teen-mentor to Denver Colorado for the World Youth Day events with Pope John Paul II. That was the second most profound experience I had during my youth.
I was there to be a mentor for a group of junior high and high school students from the East Coast. It wasn’t easy and I didn’t quite live-up to the role, but I learned a great deal from the experience.
Although I no longer go to Church or really identify myself as a Catholic, the experience of being in the company of hundreds of thousands of other teenagers all gathering in Denver to welcome the Pope to the United States for a week was just amazingly powerful, it’s something I will never forget in my life.
He spoke the words, “Be Not Afraid” (Matthew 28:5) throughout his ministry and the words are so profound when we take them to heart.
In martial arts and in life. If we focus too much on the things that we are afraid of, we end up holding back the true expression of who we are in our hearts, minds, and in our spirits and souls.
We don’t have to look at the words spoken by Jesus and Pope John Paul II from the lenses of religion or secularism… the message is so universal, that truly in our lives, there is nothing to fear. Our egos minimize us into little concepts and ideas about who we think we are or ought to be… it’s a way to confine ourselves and keep us from expanding as souls that ought to be expressing ourselves with love and confidence.
I wanted to express this message once again during the current visit of Pope Benedict XVI. In times when we so easily lose hope to negativity and anger, it’s very easy to point blame to our leaders, both spiritual and political, for their failures… (i.e. the Churchs’ handling of clergy sex abuse) and get angry.
Rather than trying to find ways to create division with each other and focusing on negativity: societal woes, environmental woes, economic woes, spiritual and political woes — we should be looking for ways to expand our spirits, finding viable solutions to old problems.
In teaching martial arts, I was asked recently by a potential student whether I’ve won a lot of competitions and have beaten a lot of people in fights. I had to respectfully answer that fightng is not where I am trying to put my focus as a martial artist. Whether or not the person accepted or respected by answer is something he has to deal with, it’s not my interest to prove myself as a fighter to anyone. It’s very easy to inflict violence on another human being… very very easy. What is challenging is learning to interact with people during conflict with an attitude that inspires peace.
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