Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

part of everything you do. It was 1990. I’d been out of the army for a
year and was just starting my undergraduate studies at the
University of Montana. I signed up for a very heavy class load that
included a couple of honors classes. The advocate who was helping
us at the orientation suggested that I not take such a load, especially
as I hadn’t been in an academic setting for five years. I looked at her
and said, “I’m a sniper, I can do it.”
The look on her face revealed that she didn’t have a clue what I was
talking about, but that I’d said something kind of scary to her. She
didn’t know that 36 men competed to enter the sniper class I
graduated from, and that only 13 made it into that class. Nor did she
know that out of those 13, only three graduated as snipers by
passing every phase of the course. She had no idea that what it took
to become one of those three was beyond anything she’d ever done,
or that would ever be required to do at the university. But I knew. I
knew because I was one of those 36 on the morning of day one, and
then one of the 13 remaining at the end of that first day. I was then
one of the three who graduated as a sniper. And how did that help
me with my business and other academic classes at UM? I got
straight A’s that quarter. Those that “feeeel” it will understand.
I’d like to conclude with a quote that has resonated with me since the
first time I read it back in 1995. I was reading the excellent book, In
Search of the Warrior Spirit by Richard Strozzi Heckler. Hidden
within those pages was this key to warriorship, “The path of the
Warrior is lifelong, and mastery is often simply staying on the path.”

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Teacher:
Have you ever known someone who seemed to flit about from one
interest to the next, filled to the brim with enthusiasm for their latest
flavor-of-the-month interest, cause, or hobby? Me too.
This precept speaks to me about a life’s work. Whether this life’s
work is a study of a martial art, or music, or the finer points of a long
lasting marriage, or anything really, when you set on a path (the
way), you should do it with tenacity. You should be in it “for the long
haul.” If you want to be good at anything, then you need hard work
over a long period of time, which incidentally is the very definition of
kung fu, it’s Chinese for “hard work.”
In any endeavor, there are many off-ramps. You will always feel that
you are being presented with reasons to quit and move on to
something else. This is especially so in the earlier stages when the
fruits of labor are not yet known. When success has arrived, it is
easier to keep to the path, but when the struggle is still there and still
real then the task is one of determination. When a person is willing to
put in the hard work, the early mornings, the late nights, and
approach all of it with an attitude that I will not be denied, success
will come.
In the martial arts, everything that a person could have working
against their success I had working against mine. Overweight,
uncoordinated, injury-prone, slow healer, slow learner, lazy
tendencies, lover of cured pork products, placing of obligations to
family ahead of my own wants in my chosen field, low income—you
name it, it was on the list. And I still managed to successfully reach
black belt rank. And then some…
My success was never because there was something special about
me. It was because I refused to quit. That simple. I was going to
reach my goals or die trying… and I was reasonably sure that death
was not on the line.
At any moment, had I chosen to accept any of the ready-made
excuses which were right at my fingertips, I would have failed. When

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I dislocated my knee two weeks before a rank test, or when I broke a
bone in my foot the day before a black belt test, or had I accepted
the failure of that test, I would not be where I am now, doing what I
do. And, you would be reading the words of someone else.
The excuses to quit are always there, ready and waiting to be
accepted. Not just in my life, but in the life of anyone.
Many people live their lives like beaten dogs and never stick their
neck out to see what is out there in the world. Their greatest
potential lies untapped. What could they have accomplished and
contributed to the world if only they’d refused to give in or give up?
We will never know. How many cures for diseases went
undiscovered because the person with the right set of questions in
their head to find the cure was too full of self-doubt to go to school
and study medicine? What else have we missed out on because
someone quit when things became challenging?
Don’t let doubts stop you from taking life as far as you can. Set in
your mind that quitting is not an option. If you can see that you have
already sacrificed, already taken the hits, already been hurt and
beaten, what reason could you possibly have for walking away and
not seeing things though to the end?