Note: Originally posted on a previous weblog: Tuesday, March 14, 2006
As many of you know, Dai Sifu Don Grose, Headman of the Tucson Ving Tsun Academy and President of the International Ving Tsun Kung Fu Federation (IVTKFF), hosts the Annual Southwest Wing Chun/ Ving Tsun/ Wing Tsun Gathering. These events are always very informative, but their primary goal is to bring the WC/VT/WT families together in order to get to know each other and our various schools/lineages.
It is no secret that past rivalries between the lineages have detracted from progressing the art to the populace, but many of those barriers have been removed due to events such as the annual Gathering.
But what do these types of events really mean in the long-term scheme of things?
I remember our first Gathering in 2004 when Dai Sifu Don said that there was a time when getting the families together would have broken out into a fight. 
And he was absolutely correct.
There was a time when getting multiple lineages under the same roof, for one, was almost impossible, and two, if it did happen, more than likely the police would be called.
Sad but true. Here we are, practitioners of one of the most well-known and effective methods of self-defense with a distinguished history of extremely competent fighters, yet putting our various family members together in the same place at the same time is a problem. I guess in one way it is understandable to a certain degree; after all, ”family pride,” “lineage pride,” etc., is present in all martial arts. But at the same time, we as martial artists and members of the Wing Chun/Ving Tsun/Wing Tsun families should be bigger than that, you know?
I liken it to raising a child: you do everything you can to ensure that they get everything they need in order to be prepared for the world. You nurture them as much as possible while also teaching them how to live in society and be a good citizen. And when it is time for them to go out on their own, you hope they make the right choices in life.
Sometimes those choices are good and sometimes they are not, but in the “not so good” choices, you hope they learn from them and do not make the same mistakes repeatedly.
How does that relate to Wing Chun? Because we have those same choices.
We can choose to either make friends and learn from our families, or we can keep the barriers up and make what I believe is a “not so good” choice.
Provided that any event in which we can share information with each other is not abused, the events can go a long, long way to removing some of the barriers we all still encounter periodically. I have learned a great deal from my teacher, as well as teachers of other lineages. I have had the fortune of training with some truly exceptional practitioners of many different lineages, and the one thing I can say is that everyone – regardless of what they believe – had something of value to pass on. What we do with it after we have learned about it is entirely up to us, and personally, I would rather pass on a good view of our art to my students and those that follow us vs. a “back biting” attitude or one of discontent.
We all make our own choices, of course, but in that choice, we make known our inner selves.
So what do events like these really do over the “long haul”? They bring us together, which is still very new to a lot of people. And those that make these attempts – people like Dai Sifu Don Grose - should be commended for making the continuous effort of bridging the gap between the families and making us a whole unit vs. a “collection of parts.”
If there are schools in your area, go over for a visit. Introduce yourself and your students so that you can create a more close-knit bond with your fellow practitioners. Whether you agree or disagree with what they are doing, who cares? Does it really matter if they teach something different than you? Of course not. They have their views about things, you have yours. But that does not mean that there has to be animosity at any level.
I have met some practitioners here in Arizona that I did not entirely agree with, nor they with me. But we remain good friends in spite of that and even periodically train together. That only proves to everyone that with an open mind, willing to accept what someone else does because we share the common bond of being WC/VT/WT families, we CAN overcome these limits.
It simply takes time, and patience, and the willingness to want to do it. But it all has to start somewhere, and that is really what events such as the annual Gathering accomplish.
posted by AWCA @ 3/14/2006 06:24:00 AM
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