Hello Wah Lum Family,

As I think about America celebrating 250 years, I am reminded of Wah Lum celebrating 56 years in that same America, and it makes me think about where we are right now.

We seem to hear that Americans are hopelessly divided and hateful, but I think it’s a lie.

It’s true that many, if not most of us, may have an addiction to watching things that aren’t helpful, and there are multiple industries spending billions of dollars to keep you watching these unhelpful things, but it’s also true that most of us are too busy to post hateful and dividing things.

We work, raise our families, help a neighbor or friend, and of course, train at Wah Lum. 😉

And we almost never post a word about any of it.

This is the majority of Wah Lum, and America. Hardworking, neighbor-helping, and yes, America-loving.

If you are always online, you may be detached from reality and feel that we are broken and anyone who disagrees with us is evil. But looking at one of the most divisive algorithms out there, the Pew Research Center found that only 21% of U.S. adults ever use Twitter, and just 10% visit it daily.

What about cable TV? Less than 1% of the country watches Fox News, CNN, or MSNOW combined.

We also agree on a lot of things. To name just one, a landmark poll of 20,338 adults by the Kettering Foundation/Gallup Democracy for All project found that 84% of Americans believe our racial, religious, and cultural diversity is a strength.

At Wah Lum, we have a North Star, our martial arts altar. We repeat our core values at the end of each class:

• Respect: Honoring the traditions of Wah Lum, our teachers, fellow students, and ourselves. Respect forms the foundation of our practice and our interactions.
• Learn Kindness: Kindness demonstrates our character.
• Learn Fellowship: We are a family united by a shared journey.
• Hard Work: Discipline and perseverance drive mastery. Consistent effort and dedication make us stronger in body, mind, and spirit.
• Control: This goes beyond physical movement. We develop the ability to regulate our emotions, thoughts, and actions, fostering patience, balance, and resilience in all aspects of life.

The founding fathers of America also gave us a North Star in the ideas that were written down in the Preamble to the Constitution. A blueprint for what America at her best should be.

Sharon McMahon (also known as America’s Government Teacher) noted that if you distill the Preamble down, it highlights four main ideas: Justice, Peace, Goodness, and Freedom. 

That is what America at her best looks like.

And in the same way that those of us who practice Wah Lum aren’t always Respectful, Kind, showing Fellowship, Working Hard, or demonstrating Control—America hasn’t always been perfectly Just, Peaceful, Good, or Free.

But if we use our Wah Lum and Constitutional benchmarks, we can definitely point to examples where we have tried, put in the work, and succeeded.

Here is a good test you can do on your own, especially for our Wah Lum family: In a given year, you encounter dozens, if not more, of your Wah Lum family frequently enough to appraise their character. Are they good people? I bet the answer is a resounding YES. This is Wah Lum’s majority, and I think it is also America’s majority.

Sometimes we find ourselves on shaky ground. Sometimes we miss the mark. But we keep striving to be better because we believe in our potential. 

Having these benchmarks also allows us to check ourselves when we start moving in the wrong direction.

Looking at America at 250, we can remember that when George Washington left office, he cautioned Americans in this infant republic against “cunning and ambitious men” who would try to subvert the power of the people and usurp the reins of government for themselves.

If we look at our training in Wah Lum, our ego can easily trick us into thinking we are doing the right thing. But our ego can be cunning and make us think we are the lone hero surrounded by villains.

The people who founded America shared a very similar foresight to the ancient philosophers who shaped martial arts ethics. 

You have to work hard to prevent making mistakes, and you have to accept the reality that sometimes your efforts will feel insufficient. But that doesn’t mean we abandon the experiment of becoming better and adhering to our benchmarks.

It takes time, and it takes deliberate effort.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. It’s important to have a baseline level of civic knowledge in the same way it’s important to understand where you are in your martial arts training in order to get on the right path. 

Simply put: you have to know stuff in order to be able to do stuff.

The next time you are looking at your screen and it tells you America is broken, close it. Go outside. Talk to a friend or a neighbor (or maybe come to the Temple to train), and see what is real.

See you in training,

Sifu Oscar

 

P.S. Find your community. If you are tired of the noise online and want to be part of a real-world community that focuses on hard work, mutual respect, and building each other up, email us to set up a time to come in and observe a live class.