In my Thursday night group there are two teachers, a drummer, a doctor, a person who flys alot, an heiress (at least I think of her as an heiress as she lives a charmed life), a minister (who rarely shows up as she is very busy), and a bookkeeper, and a would be fashion designer/ massage therapist, and a friend who's aged parents consume her days (she too rarely shows up) and two former teachers, who now have plenty of free time.
I am one of the active working teachers. My job is to keep a karate group interested in a subject that breathes me. Hard to believe that I get paid for what I do and that after 37 years, teaching classic traditional karate is like breathing. I believe I would want to leave the earth plane if I no longer could share my talent for giving someone with a burning desire to learn, the gift of a lifetime of movement and the ability to turn around and teach that ability to others.
In Okinawa there are old men who do karate, and no one ever says, "You are too old to do this." The old karate men are revered.
I have no role model to follow. I don't know any women approaching 70, who own a karate castle on one acer in the middle of no-where.
I enjoy teaching a martial art that is also a daily practice. I guess you could say, I am a woman pioneer in a man's art or perhaps it just doesn't matter that I am alone on the bleeding edge!
The expression keep moving forward, "Zen Shin" (The battle cry of the Japanese in WW II) is easier than the mulling over of looking back. In ten years from now as I approach my 80's, I expect to be teaching and I expect to be healthy, happy and if not....I hope to be dead! All is well!
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