Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Insurance Executive:
Clearly Musashi was a free thinker. Although born just a few years
after Portuguese trade ships first landed on Japanese shores,
Musashi would witness the beginning of a swing in the culture,
specifically, the introduction to never-before-seen firearms and
Christianity. The cultural change, however brief, wasn’t a smooth
one. In the Battle of Negashino, for example, the Portuguese
employed 2,000 guns to fight an army of sword swinging Samurai
(violating the axiom: never bring a knife to a gunfight). Other
countries would follow—Netherlands, England, and Spain—bringing
with them Christianity as well, in the form of Catholicism.
While a new shogun would expel all foreigners in 1635, the Christian
religion remained, along with many European customs. Those
Japanese who had converted to Christianity would be persecuted,
but no doubt a number of people continued to believe and many of
the new customs remained as well, albeit behind closed doors.
Musashi lived through many of these turbulent years, especially as
an adult in the 1600s. It would seem an easy assumption given the
master swordsman’s dedication to the samurai way of life, including
Buddhist traditions, that he would intensely rebel against customs
and beliefs that didn’t relate to his thinking as to how Japanese life
should be.

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I like to think I have always followed my way of thinking and doing
things even when they were outside the “custom” at the time. For
example, as a teenage girl growing up in my city, it was virtually a
tradition to party, meaning drink hard, take drugs, drive dangerously,
and do so weekdays and weekends. I didn’t go along with the crowd,
though, as I decided early on that following the pack and acting out
in such a fashion wasn’t for me. I didn’t believe in it and it didn’t fit
my personality. So instead of following others, as if I were just
another sheep, I stayed away from the herd, and did what I wanted,
which was to study business and martial arts. It paid off for me
because my skills learned in business classes led me to a career I’m
still involved in today. My early martial arts training was sporadic, but
when I found the right schools to fit my needs at the time, I jumped in
with both feet and have remained actively involved in the fighting arts
for many years.
I taught my children to think along the same lines. I taught them
when something was popular and in accordance with what they
believed was right then they should go ahead and participate. In fact,
if a leader was needed, jump in with both feet and lead the pact.
Conversely, I said if the popular thing was not in accordance with
what they believed to be right—drugs, drinking, stealing from stores,
marking walls in graffiti—they should be brave enough to refuse to
be involved.
There was a popular poster at the time that depicted a line of girls
standing by a balance bar attached along a wall in a ballet school. All
the girls were prim and proper in their ballet outfits, standing on the
tips of their toes in typical ballet fashion, and extending one graceful
arm. Except for one girl; she had hooked her knees over the bar and
was hanging upside down, her dress bunched around her head, and
her tongue was sticking out at the camera. I told my children, “Be
that kid.”
There is nothing wrong with following beliefs and customs but only if
they fit who you are. If they don’t, you should be courageous enough

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to stand up for what you believe in even when all the sheep are
against you.