Experience Concentrates

An avalanche works because a little bit of snow starts to slide and pulls a little more with it, which pulls a little more which pulls a lot more...

Life is like that too. When you step out of your comfort zone and see a piece of the wide world for the first time you will see other pieces of a wider world from your new vantage point. When you read a really good book and start poring through the bibliography you will find a bunch of books to read that will lead you to many others.

Growth cause growth. Learning encourages learning. Life makes life- and living makes living, which is not quite the same thing.

Combative experience accumulates and concentrates. Sean and I taught an instructor course for defensive tactics today. Most of the people in the course were instructors and veteran officers. A few were martial artists... but some were something else. We were talking about experience and what we had learned and there was this handful of instructors who gravitated to one group and the others watched them. It struck me that each of the members in our group had more fights than than everyone in the other group combined.

We aren't bad guys. No one in the group (except maybe Dave ;)) goes looking for a fight. But for whatever reason (inclination? dumb luck? attitude?) each of us were very successful in our early fights and consequently were called in for anything that might go bad. We were then assigned to the positions where bad things happened: booking, disciplinary, ad-seg. The little bit of experience quickly grew. That lead other places- the tactical team first.

Then Sean and I went slightly different ways. I got promoted and spent the next five years still fighting but investigating and evaluating even more. Went from being an operator to a planner. Took a side step into Search and Rescue and learned more about other stupid ways to die. Really integrated experience with martial arts- started writing and meeting people and teaching.

The avalanche is still building power.