reflections on the warrior spirit

...sixty-year-old named Valery. He seemed shady to me right away. He kept steering the conversation toward people of nontraditional orientation. That topic came up abnormally often in the conversation. He asked where I'd be sleeping, offered to take me to his place. I made it clear I wasn't part of the gay brotherhood, he got it and left, making a call to someone on the way. I slept at Lera's again, I'll stay with her for a couple of nights. My leg is getting better.

REFLECTIONS ON THE WARRIOR SPIRIT = Day 33 =

I spent the first half of the day at Lera's. Pregnant Vika came over. Soon now... Today I had to decide — stay in Sochi or go to Crimea after all. I've already explored almost all of Krasnodar Krai, but what to do about Crimea? Over the last few days, the thought of ending the trip had visited me repeatedly. Honestly, I'm fed up with adventures. But I still decided to see it through and go. And so back on the road, and back on BlaBlaCar. First I'll get to Belorechensk, and from there to Crimea. The departure time was as late as 3:00 AM. So I had plenty of time to enjoy a walk through my favorite southern city. I strolled along the embankment for a few hours, and when it got dark, I sat down on a bench and stayed there a while. Various thoughts washed over me. I reflected a lot on the warrior spirit, the essence of martial arts, the philosophy of combat. It was something like active meditation. I recalled all the fights I'd been in, all the sports matches. The warrior spirit is something

profoundly deep, and the philosophy of martial arts holds immense wisdom.

I arrived at a fighter's creed, whose main motto is "destroy the target directly and quickly with minimal losses," and whose main tenets are as follows: - Every strike is lethal; - Every strike pierces the victim through and through; - Every strike inflicts spiritual pain; - Every strike deals energetic damage to the victim; - Every strike brings organ decay; - Every strike breaks the victim's will; - Win or die. It is with this mindset that it makes sense to enter a fight, if it concerns matters of life and death. Any other mindset will weaken us and make us ineffective. And we will surely lose to someone in whom these attitudes are more strongly expressed than in us.

This is it — true martial art. Everything else is circus and childishness. That's why martial art cannot be applied in sports in its full splendor. It was created for self-defense and war. And in both, what matters above all is preserving life and health — both your own and those you protect. And if we play at fighting, if we think about how to cause less harm to the enemy and not cripple him, we might fail at that responsible and primary task — to survive and eliminate the threat with the least losses. Hence, true martial art is mortally serious in its very essence, and it is, of course, not for everyone. But I could be wrong, since I'm far from perfect in this. Just thoughts out loud.