How I love to watch the masters

What I love about watching highly skilled old men practicing their art, be it aikido, judo or whatever, is not just to watch them perform their technique with amazing fluidity and simplicity. After a while, one almost takes it for granted. Oh, he's just doing shiho nage...

It's also fun to watch younger, less experienced practitioners (who may be fairly skilled compared to many others) try to work a technique on the old man, and fail.

Not that I enjoy watching people fail, mind you. It simply serves as a reminder that what looks so simple and so fluid is really the result of mastery, of uncountable hours and years immersed in a thing. Then, when we go from watching the failure back to the smooth, seemingly effortless technique of the master, we are reminded of the true beauty we have been fortunate enough to behold.

Take, for example, this video of Tamura Nobuyoshi Shihan. Enjoy.

[I'm still busy dealing with my wife's recovery, not just from hernia surgery, but an additional infection plus strep throat on top of that! She's doing better now, finally, so I'll get back into the swing of things shortly.)