Morihei Ueshiba and some overlooked truths about personal growth and happiness
In the first pages of The Art of Peace, Morihei Ueshiba lays down a lesson that has stuck with me for the decade or so since I first read it:
One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.
The message is as simple as it is powerful. But it’s easy to miss, if you don’t give it much thought. It’s a message not just about happiness, but also about motivation, work, and building a life you can be proud of.
Right Where You’re Standing
Ueshiba is issuing a warning. A warning against the limiting thoughts we hold with us — the constraints we build into our lives that keep us from the growth we desire. When he talks about heaven, it’s of course not the literal heaven.
He’s talking about whatever it is we desire. He’s talking about that place we want to be, or the things we want to obtain, and the person we want to be. But because we’re not there yet, or we don’t have those things, we’re not happy.
And the crazy thing is, half the time, we’re not even quite sure what heaven would be for us. We just know that wherever we are, this isn’t it. Whatever we have, it’s not what we really want. Whoever we are now, it’s not who we want to be. And so we keep ourselves locked out of heaven.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need more than we have, or a place other than where we are, to be at peace. That doesn’t mean we can’t aim for growth or have a destination in mind. It just means that we can’t let longing for the destination keep us from enjoying the path to it. Surely, you’ve enjoyed the walk to the restaurant even if you were really dying to eat there, right? Enjoy being on the way to the destination.
The Place to Train Is Here, The Time to Train is Now
The other side of Ueshiba’s quote is that not only is heaven right where you’re standing, but it’s also the place to train — rather than a place where you just sit and enjoy your achievement.
But what does he mean by training? Everything is training. It’s the work of daily life. It’s character-building. It’s testing yourself, and pushing a bit further. It’s making it through challenges and deprivation. It’s the work of making it through the furnace of living.
Two points of emphasis, then, regarding ‘training.’
Don’t Wait
First, we often put off doing the work we should be doing because we’re waiting on certain conditions. We wait until we get the new workout clothes to start working on getting fit. We wait until the new year to really work on improving ourselves. We put off planning that difficult project until the kids aren’t running around the house, or we’ve made our coffee and we’re in the right mood. We put off our work — our training, so to speak, until things are just so.
But we shouldn’t. If we wait to train until we’re comfortable, and our desires our met, that’s not really training. It’s recreation. Recreation is valuable, and necessary. But it has a different function than training. Recreation lets you rest, relax, and have fun while exerting yourself. Training challenges you and forces you to grow. It’s not comfortable.
Don’t wait for the perfect time and place to train. The place to train is here. The time to train is now. The less perfect things are, the more you’re actually training — because it’s hard.
When we insist waiting before we get to work, we’re asking for our training to be easy. Which means we’re asking for our training to both be easy and to help us grow. That is asking the impossible. The more we do this, the more we miss valuable opportunities to do real work on ourselves, and real work for others.
The Destination Is Never Guaranteed
Secondly, we often think that the work we need to do in order to grow won’t be fulfilling until we get to the goal we’re after. That assumption often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we don’t believe we can enjoy not having what we want yet, we turn the journey to get it into suffering. The more we want the pleasure of the destination, the more we refuse to see the pleasure available to us on the way there.
But that keeps us from enjoying the work of our lives. Which is a tragedy. You can find enjoyment in any work, as long as you see it as training.
- You’re scrubbing toilets. You’re training yourself to power through repulsive conditions.
- You’re serving angry people burgers and fries at a dive. You’re training yourself to act with grace under pressure, in rough conditions.
- You’re in a prison cell. You’re doing the toughest, most rewarding work of all: spending quality time alone with yourself, and making improvements.
Don’t forget that you may not get what you’re after. You may work your way up, and scratch and save, and kiss all the rings you thought you had to. And you may never get the big house, the salary, the recognition, or the romance. The work doesn’t guarantee those results.
The most you can guarantee yourself is that you did the work to aim and shoot. Hitting the target may not happen. If you can’t do that work and enjoy it, you’ve promised yourself a life of misery for nothing. So why not use the hard work as a way to make yourself a better person — and enjoy that as it happens on a daily basis? Rather than take pride in the awards and the money, take pride in the fortitude, skills, and resilience you’ve built within yourself?
Wherever You Are, That is the Place to Train
Don’t wait for conditions to be right.
Every job is the one to hone your skills at.
Every place you live is the one to fashion into a welcoming home.
Don’t wait. Do something, any little thing, here and now.
We have a terrible habit of keeping ourselves waiting. But we shouldn’t. After all, don’t we get angry when someone else keeps us waiting? But we go right on keeping ourselves waiting.
So stop it now. Refuse to keep yourself waiting any longer. Love yourself enough to realize that heaven is right here, and it’s the same place to begin training: right where you’re standing.