THE MADAGASCAR MATTER – Chapter Two

If you missed Chapter One, you can read it here right now!

Chapter Two

The brilliant supernova incinerating my eyesight didn’t allow me to see much more than the pistol. It was enough that I knew I was in danger, but not nearly enough to get to grips with the rest of the situation. Before I could even think about reacting to the threat, I needed to know who else was in the room, where they were, what they had for weapons, that sort of thing. If I moved too soon, the only person who was going to get killed was me. And frankly, I kinda liked me the way I was.

Alive.

“You guys really take room service seriously, huh?”

There was a pause and then the briefest chuckle that spilled over into a hearty laugh. The light switched off and I blinked a few times.

In front of me sat a huge man the color of deepest night. He looked like a living shadow with only a swath of brilliant white teeth breaking the smooth, gleaming skin of his face.

More importantly than his smile was the fact that the Colt 1911 lowered. “I was told you have a decent sense of humor.”

“Glad to know my reputation precedes me.” I frowned. “I guess.” I hadn’t been active all that long. But then again, on my first trip overseas when I apprenticed under Zero, I had my mug shot snapped five times by the East German Stasi before I even left the airport. Apparently, someone was compiling a dossier on me. Swell.

“I expected you to be a little bit more aware, however. The fact I was able to break into your room, take a seat, and catch you sleeping has me a bit concerned about your future.”

I nodded in the direction of the door. “Have you seen those locks? They wouldn’t stop a feather from breaking in.”

“Even still, for a Fixer, I must say I’m somewhat disappointed.”

His English was tinged with a British accent, but that wasn’t surprising in this part of the world. I started to say something about expectations when a new voice cut through the air…

© 2010 by Jon F. Merz All rights re­served

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Birth of a Year (Part 2 of 2)

Note: if you haven’t read the first part of this post yet, you can do so by clicking here to read it

So I’ve let the first half of this essay sit out online for a few days now (despite telling you all that the companion piece would appear within 24 hours) because I wanted those who read it to let it sink in for a while.  I know plenty of people who would read something like what I wrote and then pretend that it didn’t apply to them, because it’s easier to pretend than it is to take responsibility for one’s actions.  That’s the thing about death; it’s easier to give up than it is to stay in the fight, keep swinging despite overwhelming odds, and still keep fighting when Death comes anyway.  Conversely, birth is anything but easy (just ask any woman who has gone though labor and delivery!)

2010 dawns as any new year does: with millions of us vowing to enact new resolutions, new lifestyles, changes to our diet, our careers, our wallets.  With startling regularity, these resolutions fall by the wayside as the days pass and the brightness of the New Year starts to wane as we trundle into February.  Depending on your personal amount of self-discipline, those resolutions may last longer or shorter.

The question for 2010 isn’t what your resolutions are or how many you’re going to make/break.  There’s only one question you have to answer: will 2010 be different?  Will this be the year you steer your personal destiny toward greatness?

Greatness refers to anything you aspire to, any dream you’ve nurtured for years and years, any desire you might covet.  Your definition of greatness is unique.  It’s as individual as you are.  As such, there should be very little actually stopping you from achieving it.  In fact, I’d wager the single biggest obstacle to your achievement of greatness isn’t an external factor, but rather an internal one.

We’ve all got decisions we might regret; actions we took that didn’t pan out as we’d intended, things we wish we’d done.  Those little regrets pile up inside of us; individually they’re small, but together they start to form impenetrable brick walls hindering our forward progression.  How many brick walls do you have inside of you?  Are there truly brick walls outside of you that hinder your progress?  (In fairness, there might be…)

As you start 2010, don’t concentrate on the past (unless it’s to learn from previous mistakes) and the regrets you might have.  You are where you are and there’s no amount of memory regression, thought backpedaling, or therapeutic horse puckey that’s going to change the past, since none of those things enable you to go back in time and change history.  The present is where you are at now.  The future lays before you.  Your past is simply that: already passed.  Honesty gives you the opportunity to understand what you truly want from life.  Courage and discipline are the tools to earn that greatness you aspire to.

“If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Self-help “gurus” are often fond of telling the masses that we can all be great.  What they mean is that we all have the potential to be great.  But most people will not embrace that potential because it’s a hard slog reaching it.  It takes a gut-awful amount of work, blood, sweat, and tears that most people are simply not comfortable enduring.  As such, the real truth is that most people won’t ever find greatness.  At a certain point, they have that realization when they figure out how much work is involved and so instead of greatness, they aspire to mediocrity – that notion of “it’s good enough.”  I’d argue that this is exactly why the United States of America is going to have a serious problem with other countries surpassing us in the future – because the majority of our citizens are lazy schlubs who live by that motto of “good enough.”

I’m not saying this because I hate the US, far from it.  And if you know my background, you know I am very much a patriot.  I say this because there’s an epidemic of mediocrity sweeping this nation.  It’s why people fail to keep their resolutions.  We, as a nation, have made failure a bad word.  When every child makes a sports team or some parent calls up an employer because their recent college graduate failed to secure a job position, there’s a serious problem.  Can you imagine the debacle if every candidate who tried out for Delta Force Selection was granted entry because the Directing Staff didn’t want to hurt their feelings?  Instead of a top-notch special operations unit, we’d have a bunch of idiots entrusted with carrying out the most dangerous national security assignments (and as a result, we’d have a helluva lot of dead operators)  It’s a ridiculous notion, right?  But that’s exactly what we’ve done in most other areas of our society.  Failure is bad, so instead, everyone “wins.”  But winning is exactly what we aren’t doing.  We’re cutting our very legs out from underneath us.

Failure isn’t bad at all.  It’s how we measure ourselves, prove our mettle, and gain the perspective necessary to understand when we’re actually achieving greatness.  Failure’s only bad if you allow it to overwhelm you and cause you to sit in the corner and sulk away the remainder of your life.  The majority of the most successful people in the world have failed countless times.  What distinguishes them from everyone else who failed is that they didn’t give up; they got back up, learned from the failure, and got back into the fight.  They refused to accept the notion that things were “good enough.”  They were honest with themselves, knew what they wanted, and kept going until they achieved that goal.

The birth of 2010 represents an incredible opportunity for all of us.  I know what I’m aiming to achieve this year.  I hope you’ll all take a few hours to analyze what your own goals or dreams are.  Understand the reasons underlying those goals and dreams.  Why do you want them?  (be honest, there’s no “right” answer required – just an honest one.  If you want millions of dollars so you can gloat at your annoying miserly cousin, then embrace that reason as honestly as you can.)  Once you’ve done that, prepare yourself for battle.  Tell yourself you’re not going to settle for “good enough.”  Even if you fail the first time, you’re going to keep fighting until you win.  Honesty, courage, and the discipline to keep going.  One foot in front of the other in front of the other in front of the other…every step you take forward is one step further away from those who have given up and settled for “good enough.”

Dare to be honest.

Dare to be courageous.

Dare to be disciplined.

Dare when others tremble in fear.

Live 2010 like no other year before it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Round-Up

I hope you all had a truly wonderful holiday – mine was very nice indeed. It was an official “white” Christmas around here with several inches of the flaky stuff sitting on the ground to add to the festive mood. With the lights on at night, things looked quite nice. Christmas Eve was spent in Lowell at my sister’s house for the traditional Italian feast. This year it was gnocchi and homemade meatballs with the family’s secret sauce recipe. Great stuff. The smell of homemade pasta and sauce is one I never get tired of, since growing up it was omnipresent at my grandmother’s house whenever we would visit. Christmas Day, the family and I flew to Zurich and then drove to our chalet in the Swiss Alps where we overindulged in goose and lots of other goodies. You can see the pictures over on my Facebook Page.

Actually we weren’t in Switzerland; we were in Marshfield, but my sister-in-law’s house looks like a chalet and the backdrop really added to the vibe, lol…

We did have a very nice time, however, and I got to spent more time with my god-daughter Kiley, who is pretty much the most preciously adorable bundle of joy on the planet.

2009 is winding down now, and in its wake the remnants of an up-and-down year disappear slowly under the waves. I don’t ever spend much time looking back and wishing that certain things were different. To me, that’s a bit of a waste of time. I prefer to focus ahead at the prow cutting through the waves, figure out what it is that I want to accomplish in the new year and then steer the ship so that I meet the challenges head-on. I don’t usually indulge in any “best of” lists or spend time thinking of the “top ten things I wish my genitalia had done in 2009” because I’m too busy looking toward the future I want to create and figuring out how to implement steps necessary NOW to make it happen. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t digress and waste your time with yet another list. 🙂

So what IS on the horizon for 2010? Lots, baby. Lots.

January kicks off with a bang. The Madagascar Matter, a new serialized Lawson Vampire adventure, debuts in the first week of the new year and delivers a chapter each week over the course of 2010. It’s by subscription only, however, which means you’ll have to sign up in order to travel back in time with Lawson and his former mentor Zero to the early 1980s in Africa. You can do so by clicking the order form below:

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Otherwise, there will be much more Lawson Vampire news. THE FIXER is coming, of course, and with it, a lot of other Lawson goodness. HELLstalkers is also finally getting ready to launch, so Joe Nassise and I will have mucho news on that front as well. As usual, I’m extremely optimistic about the coming twelve months. Life is exciting, unpredictable, and glorious. I hope you all take the time to revel in the fact that we’re all hurtling through the universe together and that each of us has the power to make our own lives an example of goodness, generosity, compassion, and bold action. The world has too many lazy, cheap, selfish, negative “people” only out for themselves, forsaking family and stranger alike as they trundle through life never truly experiencing joy, only the illusion of supposed personal gain acquired at the expense of those who used to love them.

Don’t be like that.

Take this time to reflect and imagine how you can turn 2010 into a year of adventure, action, and unbridled enthusiasm for everything that life has to offer. Banish complacency and laziness from your world.

Who Dares Wins.

Too Many Jonin in the Kitchen (Warning: Rant)

In the Togakure-ryu Ninjutsu martial lineage I study, there were traditionally three levels of actual “ninja”: field operatives (the agents on the ground who actually carried out missions) were known as genin, middle-level cut-outs (the handlers who conveyed orders from the top-level to the field agents) were called chunin, and the master strategists who saw the big picture were known as jonin.  This three-tiered system was used for several reasons.  From a security standpoint, it was essential that there be cut-outs between field operatives (usually the most at-risk personnel for capture) and the leaders in charge of overseeing large-scale operations (terrorist cells routinely use this method as well).  But from another perspective, this three-tiered system was used for a very simple reason: not everyone is cut-out to be a leader – especially a leader who might well be sending operatives out to potentially die in the name of the mission or the security of the grander family.

Naturally, this doesn’t sit well with a lot of people.  A lot of folks want to believe that they have what it takes to lead; that they have the determination and know-how combined with the ability to see things on a grander scale that would make them leadership material.  But leadership isn’t necessarily something to crave.  And more often than not, the very best leaders are those who have found the mantle thrust upon them, rather than aspiring to assume it.  Cincinnatus, the famed Roman leader was a former aristocrat forced to live as a farmer who answered the call when his nation needed him most.  Once his duty was done, he returned to farming – completely abdicating absolute power and authority for a much humbler existence.  Desiring to be a leader and all that it entails is a very serious decision, not to be undertaken lightly by anyone.

Nowadays, we don’t necessarily have active ninjutsu intelligence networks, but the concept remains very similar with regards to progression through ranks.

When I started my training about twenty years back, certain things were expected of an enthusiast – especially one aspiring to be accepted by what was a very close-knit group of hardcore practitioners.  You were expected to show up and train – hard – as much as possible.  Three times a week for several hours of training per session was the norm (we would have all trained more if we’d had a dedicated training space, but we took what we could get).  Ranks were doled out sparingly.  You had to prove that you not only knew the material for each rank, but that you knew how to use it, while simultaneously understanding that the rank was merely a waypoint, merely one means of gauging aptitude.  And true mastery was an elusive goal far off decades in the future, possibly not even attainable in this lifetime.  In other words, the journey itself was the reward – not the embroidered black belt hovering on the fringes of one’s dreams.  We all knew that a belt or a rank didn’t mean squat if we couldn’t use the techniques when it mattered on the street or elsewhere in our lives.

I don’t point to the past and say, “I wish it was like that still.”  Far from it.  It is the nature of life that things evolve.  And it’s foolish to desire for things to be the way they once were – especially for a ninjutsu practitioner who is supposed to understand, perhaps more than most, the role of nature’s unfolding dynamic within the universe.  Ninjutsu practitioners are supposed to evolve as their environment changes.  We adapt.  And we prosper no matter the circumstance, no matter the obstacles or challenges.  Our training prepares us to anticipate surprise, expect the unseen, and persevere in order to succeed.

That said, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend lately.  The same sense of ridiculous entitlement that pervades a great deal of modern society, now seems to be infecting the ranks of an art I hold dear.  It’s become commonplace for a practitioner to gain a black belt and immediately think they are now worthy of becoming a jonin of their training group, or even a full dojo.  Gone is the humility that should accompany any worthy leader, replaced by this sense that they know better than those who have gone before them.  Gone is the heavy burden of responsibility that any true teacher shoulders, understanding as they do that their actions, speech, and even thoughts can adversely affect the lives of those who look up to them.

Instead, many of those who gain rank now immediately set out to prove their worth and value by setting up shop and proclaiming themselves master.  Their sole estimation of personal worth is measured by how many students they can mislead – whether through malicious intent or blind ignorance of their inability and an ego that masks a tremendous sense of insecurity.  They know longer view themselves as warriors on a path toward personal betterment.  They are “masters” who know it all.

In reality, they are deluded.  At best.  At worst, they are dangerous.  Any type of leadership role carries with it the potential to do untold harm toward those who look up at you.  In this case, a supposed teacher who has not taken the time to continue his own training and clean out his own reservoir of insecurity, becomes a destructive force to the fragile student blindly seeking knowledge from what they believe is a qualified source.

In New England, my teacher Mark Davis at The Boston Martial Arts Center is the most qualified teacher and source for Ninjutsu.  Mark has been studying for three decades both here in the US and abroad in Japan, has never stopped studying, and is the epitome of what a teacher should be.  He works to perfect himself while making sure his students have what they need to become potentially even better practitioners than he is.  When I met Mark, I’d come from a tradition where we addressed the teacher as “sensei.”  Mark insists we call him Mark.  It’s not some silly thing to be casually dismissed, but a reminder that Mark is still on the path with us, not lording over us from some exalted position on high.  He may be further along and have had countless experiences we have not yet had, but he is still learning, still working, still training, and he sees the big picture.  In short, he’s a true jonin.  (Mark will no doubt deny this and I will simply say that denial only reinforces my point, lol)

Aside from Mark, there is Ken Savage at The Winchendon Martial Arts Center who is Mark’s seniormost student, a fantastic teacher and jonin in his own right, and a person I’m proud to call one of my most-trusted friends.  Ken reflects all of the good things I mentioned above.  His own dojo has been a long time coming; Ken took his time setting things up because he wanted to do it properly.  There’s a lot I’m deliberately leaving unsaid in that comment because I hope some of the folks who will read this actually re-read that simple statement and reflect on whether they’ve done things properly..

I have two other friends and fellow practitioners I would send people to train with.  In Paul Etherington’s case, he doesn’t yet have his own dojo.  But Paul embodies that same virtues that Mark and Ken do.  He’s a phenomenal practitioner and he was the first person I trained with in this art.  Paul teaches at Mark’s school in Boston and his classes are incredible.  Dennis Mahoney is another friend who runs Shinobi Martial Arts in Plaistow, New Hampshire.  Dennis has been around for years and still makes the commute into Boston most Friday nights for advanced training – he’s not complacent and understands that his role of teacher demands that he continue to improve his technique.

That’s it.

(For the astute, you’ll get what I’m saying here.  You can stop reading now.)

For those in need of the blunt:  If you’re training with someone else in New England, you are not getting what you need as a practitioner.  And the fact is, there shouldn’t even be another school or training group operating at this point.  Why?  Because there’s no one else qualified to teach.  Doesn’t matter if they’re a first degree black belt or a fifth.  The four people mentioned above are it.  And anyone operating a group or dojo should haul their butts back to Boston and make sure their own stuff is sorted before they go traipsing about proclaiming themselves “teacher” or “jonin” or whatever other label they want to throw around.  Right now, there are supposed teachers telling people they should be black belts when they are not remotely qualified to make that sort of proclamation.  The people they’re telling these things to then get upset and wonder why they haven’t been promoted.  This is an example of someone who shouldn’t be teaching (but thinks they are qualified) virtually destroying a practitioner’s life.  And rather than accept responsibility for it, they back away and hide.  It’s a horrible development and it only underscores the simple fact that there are too many people wanting to be jonin when they’re barely able to function as genin.  So get your shit straight, drop the plans to launch your DVD series, and get your ass back into the dojo in Boston so you can learn from the source: Mark Davis.