I saw a ghost
Published: Thu, 12/15/16
I saw a ghost the other evening. Okay, not really but the lane outside of our house can get very dark at night. As I was leaving my front gate a few nights ago I saw a pale face shimmering in the dark and moving towards me. It was actually a young woman dressed in dark clothing and looking at her smart phone and I told her how strange she looked faintly illuminated in the darkness like that. She found this quite amusing and I knew what I was seeing even at the time. I also found myself thinking that if I did not know about smart phones and I had not seen the woman step out into the street lit area what might I have believed about my apparition then? Are comparable situations the basis of most ghost stories? I would love to believe in ghosts and I saw one, sadly my spectral mystery was solved even as it happened.
I momentarily misunderstood what I was seeing. If I had not had the opportunity to speak with the young lady I would have assumed that I saw a woman with a smart phone. If I knew nothing of smart phones or similar sources of light then, well, who knows where my imagination might have taken me? A crude example perhaps but still useful when we are in the process of working out what we think we know about something. Hopefully we are fairly rigorous with ourselves as far as establishing facts are concerned for ourselves. Or, when you don’t have the opportunity, time or resources to find out for yourself just be willing to admit that you don’t know something, at least to yourself.
The realisation that we all have difficulties making sense of things we see or hear should always make us careful of jumping to conclusions. Certainly we must be careful how we react to things we are not sure of. Perhaps, even more importantly, we can see why someone else may not be understanding something we show or say. This happens even when the thing we are communicating is perfectly clear to us. It gets frustrating when someone makes it clear that they can’t understand what you are going on about. Annoying as it is to be told that you are not making sense that person is doing you a favour by challenging you. More dangerous is the the person who politely agrees with you then, at best just dismisses you for talking nonsense or, at worst, completely misrepresents what you have said by repeating what they think they saw or heard.
At present I am developing next year’s programme and reaching out to people to see if they are interested. On one level this is fairly simple, put on a course or class and tell people what they will learn. However, I have been having a discussion on a site devoted to Bartitsu type training about the course with Fox in April. The site moderator likes the idea of bowie knife, straight razor and walking stick. Stav five principles knife defence he hasn’t got. Yes, ‘knife defence’ he approves of ‘Stav’ is causing him a problem because it does not seem to fit into the time period he is interested in (1800 to 1925) and I am pretty sure the ‘five principles’ bit went right by him. I am in no sense implying the man is a fool for not ‘getting’ Stav based on a few comments from me, far from it. He has read quite a bit that I have written on line, so I am being taken seriously here. The lesson for me is that, even when communicating with
an intelligent and curious person with considerable knowledge of martial arts, making sense to each other is still a challenge.
Something to think about there when you feel like you are not getting through and being understood. Don’t give up it is part of the human condition.
New article online which attempts to explain the relationship between technique, method and principle in Stav, let me know if you find it helpful http://www.iceandfire.org/archive.html
Some more dates to be announced in the next couple of days.
regards
Graham
PS In the post above I am discussing honest communication entered into with good will and honest intent. It is a whole other issue when malicious intent to deceive is involved. A subject for another day.