High Impact

Friendships can get stale, especially when you feel taken for granted. Friendship is reciprocal; you understand the other's quirks and faults, and forgive them because it's so nice to feel appreciated, or to serve as a confidante, or just to share your free time in good company.

Friendship isn't selfless, though... I have thoughts on altruism and selflessness, but I'd have to say that friendship, by definition, is not selfless. Love perhaps is, depending on the person. But while friendships may contain many a selfless moment, their foundation is one built upon reciprocation. This does not mean that my conception of friendship is that of a selfish or self-serving relationship. Far from it. Reciprocal does not mean quid pro quo, or tit for tat. I do not keep score.

But a friendship decays when you feel taken for granted, when the other doesn't show understanding, or when there's little no affirmation on the other side that your presence in the other's life has any particular value. I have a lot of patience that way. Friends are still human; they have weak moments, they act thoughtlessly, they lose patience; these aren't really faults. Almost everyone is like that from time to time, and a good friendship is a durable one. Small things are recognized for what they are; individual instances of annoyance don't break a friendship. If they do, it's not a real friendship. Real friendships are not petty; they take a lot of investment, a lot of effort, and generate a lot of payback; small stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to the weight of the history, and if you throw away a valued friendship for petty reasons, you leave yourself the poorer for it.

Build up enough of that, though, and any friendship gets tested. I'm going to intentionally be vague and not discuss examples from my personal life at this point in time.

I can, however, analogize it somewhat to a problem I have with wushu practice . Last night, I went to practice at Hearst Gym in Berkeley - where I had started learning wushu. I've gotten older, it seems - the hardwood floor at Hearst Gym is easily two or three times as hard as almost any floor I've practiced on for a long time. The passage of time has rendered most of my early memories of training pain rather misty and vague, and I sit here typing and wondering whether or not it had always been like this. My left foot is bruised, my right hip is slightly messed up, and I did *nothing* different from what I do when I practice elsewhere. Soreness is one thing, but bruises and jarred joints are another.

I used to practice at Hearst all the time... it's where I started learning wushu in the first place, and I practiced there time and again years in the past. But while I usually complain about the people, today I'm just complaining about the floor. It hurts. Talk about high impact - the floor is ridiculously hard! It's obscene. It's a *bad* place to be doing anything athletic. Basketball, volleyball, martial arts - you name it, this floor is *not* for it; the hardwood is lined with cement harder than granite. Fond memories aside, I can't continue to practice there. I'm almost a decade older than when I started, and the gym is not forgiving. Several times in the past year, I have practiced there only to come away the next day with aching knees and bruised heels, and sometimes pulls and strains in my back or hip, things that do not happen when I practice elsewhere. Each and every time. I'm too old to sustain this kind of damage from a regular practice.

I think it's time to stop practicing there. I've been voicing my doubts to some of my fellow martial artists, but I think this last night decides it for me. My friendship with Hearst Gym has gone stale. Perhaps I will drop by from time to time - there are some things that I like, such as the stretching bars, and forms practice is usually ok. But no more basics and no more jumping... I can't take the pounding, and that means I can't go to practice and try to grit my teeth through the whole thing over and over again.