{"id":1207,"date":"2007-07-04T09:17:05","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T17:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2007-07-04T09:17:05","modified_gmt":"2007-07-04T17:17:05","slug":"holding-our-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/holding-our-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Holding our enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWe all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy and the one facing what we do to the enemy.\u201d\u009d
\n\u2013Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, p. 301<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Three Day Road<\/a> is about two Oji-Cree soldiers who fight for Canada in the first world war. \u00a0 They survive the fight with the enemy on the battlefield, but they lose the war to the other enemy, the one that lurks on the inner front.<\/p>\n

It is only *I* that holds others as “enemies.” \u00a0 No one is born into this world as my enemy. \u00a0 I create that story. \u00a0 My prejudices are my own, whether they appear to be generated by others or not. \u00a0 How do I know this is true? \u00a0 Because not everyone treats everyone else the same way.<\/p>\n

In my martial arts training, we speak of our “enemies” as opponents. \u00a0 We offer respect to our opponents by bowing to them because having an opponent helps us to discern our real enemies – our thinking. \u00a0 It is very difficult to best an opponent if you think of that person as an enemy. \u00a0 To fight and survive you must be clear. \u00a0 You must be engaged with what is happening, not your story of what is happening. \u00a0 The moment you forget this is the moment you stop fighting your opponent and start fighting your enemy and is the moment your opponent has beaten you. \u00a0 Truly, you have beaten yourself. \u00a0 A bout with an opponent, whether it is in dialogue or in the dojang, should lead us back to confronting our enemies and they, as Pogo said<\/a>, are us.<\/p>\n

There is no relationship between winning or losing on the mat and in the mind. \u00a0 You can lose a bout on the mat but overcome one more prejudice in the mind. \u00a0 And, like Boyden’s characters, you can win on the mat but what is unconfronted in the mind will destroy you. \u00a0 For me, peace is the when I eliminate my true enemies – the thinking that imprisons me. \u00a0 And so, I bow to my opponents for their helping me discover what it is I need to confront in myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy and the one facing what we do to the enemy.\u201d\u009d \u2013Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road, p. 301 Three Day Road is about two Oji-Cree soldiers who fight for Canada in the first world war. \u00a0 They survive the fight with the enemy on the battlefield, but they lose the war to the other enemy, the one that lurks on the inner front. It is only *I* that holds others as “enemies.” \u00a0 No one is born into this world as my enemy. \u00a0 I create that story. \u00a0 My …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[10,16,11,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2","category-leadership","category-practice","category-tkd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-jt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}