Right or wrong?
Published: Tue, 09/29/15
Yesterday I rode buses around Somerset. I began with a 0720 hrs double decker from Crewkerne to Taunton. This is the bus used by students who go to the colleges in Taunton. An hour later I caught a single decker back to Crewkerne. Later in the after noon I had quite a long wait for another small bus to bring me back from Yeovil. All done on a £5.40 day rider ticket. I got a chance to look at the countryside (beautiful autumn Day yesterday) and catch up on some reading.
However, I wasn’t riding public transport for fun. I went to Taunton to pick up a replacement prop-shaft for my van. I didn’t drive to Taunton as I usually would because (a) I had already dismantled the old prop-shaft to take in for comparison and to exchange for the old one, and (b) the MOT expired on Friday so driving the vehicle would not have been legal anyway. No, it wasn’t really lack of forethought on my part. Van went in for MOT test over a week ago, I ordered the bits and borrowed a welder last week and everything should have been fine but an inner cv boot needed replacing on the nearside prop-shaft. This means a £7 item and a reasonably simple repair.
So what went wrong? I ordered a replacement CV boot from a very reputable supplier of replacement vehicle parts called GSF. They promptly dispatched the parts including the boot as listed on their website. But the part I ordered did not match the prop-shaft fitted to my van so I missed the MOT retest deadline on Friday, had to replace the whole prop-shaft and van is now waiting to be fully tested again at the garage who will fit it in when they can. (Another excellent business, but very booked up with work because of this.)
So, did I order the right part? For my vehicle yes, for the prop-shaft actually installed, no. Did GSF send the right part? According to my order yes, was it actually useful to me? Obviously not. Could I have ordered a CV boot that would have actually fitted to the prop-shaft I had on the van? Probably, if I had know what to order, which I didn’t.
So the point of telling you all this? Apart from relieving some frustration? To illustrate that the word ‘right’ is my second least favourite word after ‘try’. As I think the situation described above shows, it is perfectly possible to be ‘right’ in every respect and yet still be completely stuck as far as resolving a real life situation is concerned. In the end the only thing I could do was the ‘wrong’ thing which was to replace the whole shaft (at some expense) when only one £7 part really needed replacing.
Training and teaching is about striking a balance between teaching a student the right way of doing something and empowering the same person to actually solve real world problems. Conventional education is too often about enabling students to get good scores and grades in exams by regurgitating exactly what the teacher told them in class. A lot of martial arts training is about awarding grades according to how exactly a Kata or other drill conforms to the way the instructor first taught it. Now, I don’t disapprove of knowledge or things being done correctly. When I teach Stav I want the stances done in the conventional way. There has to be a foundation of classical knowledge. However, correct knowledge is only the starting point. The true purpose of education is to bring out an individual’s natural ability to actually solve real world problems and move forward in life.
Self-defence for example is a case of training to solve real world problems. So, is there a right way to defend yourself? Not really, I believe that there are better and worse ways to learn how to defend yourself. However, if it comes down to it, you will just have to deal with the situation as it is. Knowledge and skill might help but the most important thing is simply to take responsibility for dealing with the situation in the best way you can.
Wednesday CQC classes and the monthly Saturday morning self-defence seminars are geared to preparing you to take responsibility for your own personal protection. We have a lot of fun training but I don’t pretend that there is a right or wrong way to deal with difficult situations, and maybe that is the most important lesson of all.
Self-defence this Saturday 1000 hrs in Crewkerne more details at http://www.somersetstav.co.uk/sd.html
regards
Graham