Say you put 15 or 20 years into learning a martial art. Not "martial arts" in general, but just one. In this case, Aikido. Thousands of hours training. Hours taken from other activities. Taken from your wife and family. You have a dojo, a small group of students. You're an upper rank yudansha in a larger organization. You don't make any money off this, if anything you're laying out at least $1500 to $2000 a year, paying dues just like your students, paying for travel and seminars, robbing your own accounts to keep your dojo afloat.

And the phone rings. It's a prospective student. He asks some questions, time, place, cost, etc. And then he asks, "Do you think Aikido is really an effective martial art?"

The answer must have burned a bit.

"No, I do it because it's a complete waste of time. I know there's other, better, martial arts. I know I could be studying something worthwhile, something that would further my spiritual development, be effective in a fight, make me a better person, but I decided almost two decades ago that I really wanted to waste as much of my life as possible doing something completely worthless."

I hope he thinks about that question and realizes how it came across. I hope he found us from this website and comes back and reads this post. I hope he decides to come visit the dojo and give Aikido a try. It's not an easy art to learn, but whatever else it may be, I assure you it is not a waste of time.