There is always a beginning and an end to every journey. The only place I seem to have any real say is in the middle — the ordinary days, the present moment, the part that keeps unfolding whether I’m paying attention or not.

Learning a new Tai Chi form has a quiet way of reminding me of this. There is a clear start. There is a clear finish. And whatever happens between those two points is mine to meet as it comes.

Some days the body listens. Some days it resists. That feels less like a flaw in the process and more like the process itself. The rhythm of good days and bad ones has a way of following you into practice, turning each step into a small reflection of everything else.

I’ve never been particularly drawn to sword form. But at the school where I study, it’s almost unavoidable. Everyone eventually picks one up. I found myself wondering if I was sidestepping something important, so I decided to stop avoiding it and see what was there.

As it turns out, that decision was enough.
The form began to speak for itself, and somewhere along the way, it quietly took on the role of teacher. What I thought would be a brief experiment started opening into something more — not dramatic, just unexpectedly alive.