Teaching Kids

Teaching children has been rewarding a humbling. These last three years have taught me a great deal about myself, as well as my fellow man. 

There is little else I can say about it. These kids, the challenge what I know of the art, and force me to refine and simplify it at the same time, in order to convey what they must learn to take over as the next generation. 

The force me to iterate the information, scaling it up as they mature and are able to handle increasingly complex tasks and store more data. 

They force me to articulate the Virtues of a martial artist, and what these virtues mean to them in their lives. To teach them to be gentle hunters in a world that could just as easily render them hard and uncaring. To show them how to be firm, while being open to new people and ideas, with out losing the path. 

I will never be able to thank them enough for the experience, the lessons they have taught me. It is my express hope that what I give to them measures up to the potential they show, and that I do not let them down as they grow older. 

Always, it has been my job to replace myself when the day comes that I can no longer bear up the sword. While I am yet young, and that day is in the distance, these kids give me hope that there WILL be some one there to pick up the torch, and bear it forward. That is their gift to me. 

Hope. 

The Cavaliers of Forteza, Hanging at the renfair.