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By the numbers


MAGKASUYO ang tadyak na inihagupit sa load-bearing na haliging pader sa silangang bahagi ng aming tahanan—bahagyang umuga, yanig ang pader, kumalampag ang rainwater downspout na nakasandal sa pader. Hindi ko na inulit ang haginit-lintik ng sikad; baka kung ano pa ang mangyari sa pader—o sa mga paa ko.

I’d blame it on dirt-plain mathematics, that whit of tremor inflicted on the load-bearing wall-post, which can absorb both lateral and vertical stresses without a flinch— a foot thick of poured concrete with reinforcing steel bars can. How could a pair of stomping front kicks even rattle that reinforced solid wall?

Uh, mathematics tells me that at a wee one percent daily increment, any given amount doubles itself in 70 days. I’ve been hurling out those kicks for ages, in a vain try to splice steel into the inner thighs and the lower leg muscles. That daily regimen wasn’t adding and compounding a daily one percent to the kicking power—give or take a tenth of the percentage it takes to double the baseline amount every 70 days, I must have been doing at less than half of 1%.

I’m afraid I’m just doing through the motions when I do the daily hand drills—trapping hands, crippling hands, Demon Hand— at the stand of bamboos rising at the southeast section of our forest-garden home. Same intent: splice a string or two of steel in the forearms and upper arms as such hurled out force of speed is absorbed in and lends blithe, lithe movements arising from the body core. But, I took my own sweet time. No hurries, no worries. Lahat ay madali kapag hindi nagmamadali. Ay, ‘twas that demon Mephistopheles who inspired the not-too-ponderous Demon Hand after he was rebuked by Faustus the Magus that thought flies faster than the 3,000 feet/second speed of light.

Math abides in culprit calculations: any sum or quantity-- such as money, speed, strength capacity or mass—increased at a paltry 1% daily doubles itself in 70 days. All it takes is patience, patience, and more patience; somehow the body can save and amass gargantuan amounts of muscle memory one day at a time.

Body aside, raising the mind to a higher level involves another set of numbers. And anyone in that level-up attempt needs to grasp what mind really is. Or as St. Augustine of Hippo avers: “Eo mens est imago Dei, quo capax Dei est et particeps esse potest. (The mind is the image of God, in that it is capable of Him and can be partaker of Him.)”

It took a 40-day fast in the desert wilderness for the Son of Man to get to the threshold of a mind-expanding experience; the Devil turned up and offered Him lots and lots of whatever the heart desires, but He declined and rebuked every temptation that lesser mortals would mindlessly grab at, no qualms.

Practitioners of the arcane arts go through the same 40-day preparation, bundling up the mind’s hideous or heinous powers with total focusing before such are unleashed on the unwitting or unwary.

Both O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, aikido progenitor, and war strategist Sun Tzu agree that every engagement, every battle begins in the mind, or as St. Augustine would have it, in the very image of God.

Not too many blokes these days can go through 40 days of mind focusing, why, even millennials were found to have an average seven-second attention span, mwa-ha-ha-ha-haw!


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