Prepare. Prevent. Protect.

One of the great gifts of martial training is learning to trust people. One of my black belts, who also happens to be an accomplished musician, likens the higher level expression of martial arts to music. The reason being that musicians need to have implicit trust with each others skill sets in order to play off of each others notes, especially when jamming.

In this video, Bruce Springsteen is in front of 45,000 people preparing to play a song his band has never played before. It’s great to watch a group of professionals, who trust each other implicitly, taking a short time to create a novel experience for all to enjoy, right before your eyes.

Achieving this level of trust takes time, but the more I learn to trust my fellow practitioner, the higher I know we can collectively take the art. To me, this video is the ultimate expression of joy when a group of people establish collective trust. I’m guessing none of them could ever have known who those trusting band mates would have been if they hadn’t learned to trust themselves first.