The Twenty Year Throw

In Aikido there is a particular throw that practitioners refer to as the “twenty year throw.”  Why?  It takes twenty years to master this move.  I’m in my third year of learning the twenty year throw. (Yes, that’s me, the one standing in the snapshot). I am little more fluid, a little more graceful.  I don’t have to stop to ponder before I move, the way I did when I first started. I have begun this arc of learning.

Twenty years seems like a long time and yet the years pass and soon twenty springs have come and gone.  The baby is off to university.  Time passes.  We can look back twenty years and see what has shaped us.  And we can look forward twenty years and imagine what we would like to become.

What is the arc of learning you would like to begin today for the next twenty years?  Is it to learn a musical instrument, to write poetry, to become a triathlete, a masterful parent,  or an authority in your profession?  Or is it to know how to make the perfect crème caramel?

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now.”

Johann Wofgang von Goethe