Nobody remembers when and why, but one day we decided that let the Naginata’s birthday in Estonia be in January. It is very symbolic to start the new year right from the birthday. Many years ago planet Earth made a full revolution around the Sun and went on a new turn and at that moment, from somewhere in the space-time continuum, a naginata fell on us. It was not any naginata there yet in December, but it has already appeared there in January. Whoa!
And since then we have been revolving around the sun as before, but now we have a naginata.
And this fact, of course, often requires reflection. Like this: do we understand what a responsibility it is to train with a naginata? After all, it is such an ancient weapon and we are among those who contribute to the preservation of this martial art. But do we understand that we will probably forever remain in the minority among various sports and other activities?
Maybe Naginata competitions will never, ever gather entire stadiums of spectators? When I was writing another project on the development of naginata in Estonia, an agent, tired of my wonderful theses and arguments, just said irritably: you understand, it is simply an unpopular!
I heard that there are competitions like underwater navigation for blind people. So, for this agent, on the popularity scale, naginata is probably somewhere there, next to underwater navigation for the blind… haha
I recently learned about a very interesting statistic. It turns out that only 10% of the total number of healthy adults can be a professional warrior. This is the necessary minimum laid down by nature itself. Of course, this refers to modern warriors, in the context of real military operations. But I wondered, are there such statistics about sports?
What if that of all those who choose sports activities, only those very ones 10% choose the path of martial arts? Perhaps, in minority and unpopularity must see the natural naturalness? It is enough to have only 10% of warriors, because they will cope anyway. There is nothing excessive or superfluous in nature.
Respect the naginata, wear the bogu with the honor, because the universe has plans for you. Not everyone is born to be a warrior.