About inspiration and creation, Academy Award and Grammy Winning Singer-Songwriter Billie Eilish said, “Make anything. I would say my one piece of advice: Try not to just copy people. I think there’s kind of like this fine line that people really don’t talk about enough, between inspiration and cloning… It’s amazing to be inspired. All you have to do is take the inspiration and just flip it. And make it your own.”
“You don’t have to worry about making something that no one has ever made in the history of life. Make exactly what you want to make. But make it your own.”
– Billie Eilish
I’m Godan (5th degree black belt) in Aikido. I’ve trained in Aikido for over 35 years. The late Mizukami Sensei taught me for 25 years until he passed away. When I first started training with Sensei, he got that I had to prove myself. Prove that I was good enough. That was my fear as a little boy never being good enough for Dad.
Sensei said, “Just train.” I didn’t have to prove anything or be someone else. I work on myself. Just train. Mizukami Sensei was a father to me. He was my Hero, my inspiration. He taught me Aikido and what it is to be a good man. In many ways, he saved my life.
Mizukami Sensei said, “You don’t have to do it (Aikido technique) like I do it. You have to make it your own.” I had to make Aikido work for me. Sensei was really saying, “Make yourself work.”
In the bigger picture, what Sensei and Billie are saying that you create something that’s your own, and on the journey, you create yourself. That’s just life.
In the beginning, I tried to do Aikido exactly like Sensei, copy him. But I got that I wasn’t him. I was younger. I had a different body, different mind, different spirit. Still when I became Sensei, lot of students told me over the years, “You teach just like Sensei.” I took that as flowers.
I believe that we all copy those who inspire us and want to be like them. Then I got confidence in myself, in my abilities, in who I am. I made it my own. Although, I did Aikido technique differently from Mizukami Sensei, I generated his same feeling in the technique. Sensei said, “Throw with your feeling out.” That was his profound gift to me. I make it my own and pass on what Sensei gave me.
Mizukami Sensei taught both Ishibashi Sensei and me. Now Ishibashi Sensei is my Sensei, my big bother. Although, our Aikido doesn’t necessarily look the same, because we’re not the same, we throw with Sensei’s feeling out.
In Aikido practice, Ishibashi Sensei showed me how to find the gap between when the attacker strikes my head and when I enter and attack first. He smiled, “You have to figure it out.” Yeah, I have to make it my own. We create our own selves, too. Sensei inspires me to train and be the greatest that I can be. Like Mizukami Sensei, he is my hero, my inspiration.
When I first started working with my therapist Lance Miller to heal my childhood trauma and depression, he asked me to compose a list of attributes that I wanted in woman for a romantic relationship. I really had no fucking interest in coming up with a list. I have since told that to Lance.
Instead, I looked at movies for inspiration. I found it in my Favorite Movie of All-Time, Martin Brest’s Meet Joe Black, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, who plays dying CEO Bill Parrish. Bill schools his daughter Susan, played by Claire Forlani, about love:
“Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without. I say, fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy and who will love you the same way back. How do you find him? Well, you forget your head, and you listen to your heart. And I’m not hearing any heart. Cause the truth is, honey, there’s no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven’t lived a life at all. But you have to try, cause if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.”
Instead of coming up with a list, I wrote a book. WTF? Still, I made it my own. My dear friend and high school classmate Ken Goldstein told me that what I wrote has an audience, that I should self-publish. Ken was a two-time Best-Selling Author, so he would know. He is my Hero, too. So, I self-published on Amazon. No, my book wasn’t the fairy tale best seller.
Yet, that led to writing for the The Good Men Project with my editors Li M Blacker and Lisa Hickey. I write about loving and forgiving thine own self on the path to end suffering. I’ve made that my own.
Inspiration breathes life, breathes life into us. We’re all inspired by others. Like Billie says, “Take the inspiration and flip it. And make it your own.” There’s only one you, anyway. Make it your own. Let that be your gift to the world. Your work of art.
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