When the time of leaving came, sister Pigeon doubted. Had the time not arrived of sticking to one thing, once and for all? Can you really change of path so many times and still move towards somewhere? The curse of her generation laid heavy on her, for a moment. Commitment, she whispered to herself. I haven’t been committed to much, she thought.
The mind of the warrior can not be detained, read sister Pigeon once. The world changes before we realize it, opponents and allies, knowledge and noise flow into each other to recreate each other anew. So past flows away from present, making commitment to a single path a fool’s errand. Perhaps. Yesterday’s steps could not explain tomorrow’s, could they?
Yet stopping kendo felt akin to declare herself defeated. But to move ahead, space was needed and kendo had become a weight rather than a path, a static commitment, a brick in a wall to avoid. Time to stop then, time to stop in order to continue. And yet the doubt, or the shadow of the doubt. Commitment to something that has lost sense is meaningless. Yet sense and commitment are to be re-created every day.
We walk. As much as we miss the ones that have branched and gone other ways, we have branched ourselves, with our own commitments and choices. The way ahead remains opaque, yet we make another step, and another. The echoes of other steps enlighten, somehow, ours. But they are ours, and ours only.
