Weekend quote - Ofer Mizrahi

Yesterday I went to Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital because of a chest injury. Yes, a successful Black belt exam, less successful single fall. We set there, Etgar and me, in the Emergency room, drinking cold water from tiny laboratory plastic cups. Not exactly "Our water", but still… And yes, it was a good exam. I recalled we used to drink Whiskey in dire straits, before Yossi started to abstain. Etgar told me stories and I told him about my previous teacher whom I angrily left after he screwed - up, misconduct that is. It was a big fall then, almost 12 years since. A big lesson, but I am still standing and breathing, carefully. This is the chain of events when you get injured in the dojo. First, on a small yellow and wrinkled paper, Professor H. writes an urgent letter to the hospital. At the hospital Dr. Noam, the same guy from my previous ailment, smiles, looks at it and says: “so you are the injured Judoka, I should have guessed it’s someone from the dojo. He then takes me to the C.T., checks the results, smiles again and looks worried. And Yossi. Yossi is awake till 3 AM, gets all the results, answers questions succinctly and feels that he had to come and not only because he invested 12 dojo years in me. Just a sparring session, but still… Then later, in the morning, at home, I feel like the twin towers but with a major difference, I am still standing. And I read what Yossi wrote to Yakov Hazan, and what Yakov wrote, and I think. I think about persistence and falls that are actually stances. And about disappointment with some teachers and falls in business and life falls and finally falls at the belt exam. And I understand that the form of the fall is less important than the way you stand and fight again, and the lesson you learned about life when every breath was a painful chore, and laughing was excruciatingly impossible. It will be only a short while before we drink the water Yossi carried on his back.