 When was the last time you asked yourself why you started Aikido? I'm sure that some of you are beginners and that's why you're watching these videos, but nevertheless, even so, after one week, one month, did you re-ask yourself why you started Aikido? Did you actually figure out why you started it before you started? Or if it's been four years, ten years, twenty years that you're doing Aikido, have you re-asked yourself then? Why are you doing Aikido? And most importantly, why you started it? Because it's interesting to notice that I had the pleasure to meet many people who study Aikido for many years and from many different countries, many different cultures, styles, etc. And I noticed that 99% of who I met, everyone started Aikido for this bigger, greater reason. They were drawn to either the philosophy of a sensei, they were drawn to the beauty of the aesthetics of the movement. There was something deeper that touched them, that they chose this martial art rather than a hundred other martial arts. And also, you can notice that Aikido is special and sometimes, if it's not the first time you're watching my videos, you know that my perspective on Aikido as a kick-ass martial art, I'm not very much into that. I tend to lean towards the understanding that Aikido is something for more than self-defense. It works as self-defense, but it's it's not the best martial art for self-defense. So if you're, if you wanted to learn Aikido for, if you wanted to learn a martial art for self-defense, probably you would have chosen something else, but you were drawn to Aikido, whether it's because there's no competition, whether it's because it is proclaimed to be mainly a self-defense martial art, where there's already, you can notice a point here. If Aikido, if you chose Aikido because it's mainly a self-defense martial art, that means you were not drawn to something aggressive. You were not drawn to something kicking ass. And maybe later, what happens oftentimes is that later when you study the art, you get to meet various people. You have to start various, you have to start having various doubts, and eventually you started to lose that contact point of why you started, but initially whoever started Aikido, 99 percent of the people started for a deeper reason. Now my question for today is are you still sticking with that deeper reason? Are you still doing Aikido for that deeper reason, or are you doing it just because it became a habit? Just because are you doing it in a way which everyone else does it, and you do it because everyone else does it in that way, or are you really trying to connect with something that called you to do Aikido? Are you sticking to what Aikido was initially for you, and what Aikido is really driving you to do? Because as a last story, a friend of mine was studying Aikido for about 10 years in a dojo, one of the biggest dojos in our country, and he was one of the first people to start with them, and after about 10 years he started to feel that there's no more that essence of Aikido that initially drawing towards there, and nobody, no one else seemed to be interested in it or explored, and he eventually lost that fire to study Aikido, and then after some years we met and we started discussing about what Aikido is and how we can change the world, and he suddenly started to become very much on fire again, because he rediscovered that initial reason why he started Aikido, and then Aikido again became his life, but when we spoke about that he would tell me often that when he was grinding Aikido and just kind of scratching the surface of it, not going deep with his first group, he wouldn't feel any real development, he wouldn't feel any real change, and when he went back after many years to train with those guys, you know, they were now fourth tons, fifth tons, they were much higher ranked than before, but he the way he expressed it to me said they didn't change, they were the same people doing the same techniques a bit better, but sometimes when I ask myself how do I classify a good class, I would say that if a person came to my class and came out better than he came, then he came in, he came out a better person than he came in, then the class was good. If he came in and learned something, some technique, but he didn't change in a better way, he didn't become a better human being, then the class sucked, even if he learned the best technique ever. So again, just to summarize it up, I want you to re-ask yourself why did you start Aikido and are you still connected with that point? Are you really sincere and honest about why you do it and are you really bringing that out in your training or whether it has become this grinding of something that just became a habit and it's all about ranks and good technique? So I leave you with that question and I'm curious to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments. This was Rokest and see you in another video.