Just move.

For the past few days, I’ve felt stalled. In business, in life, things just seem to be standing still. Maybe it’s the coming summer and the hotter days. Maybe it’s the way the intensity of the sunshine in this place subtly drains one’s energy. Maybe it’s the intense, saturating insecurity of the times. Maybe it’s fear.

Fear of what I’m not sure, but it seems like apprehension is pervading life today. And as I feel this pause, I imagine myself in the dojo, on the mat. I can see my partner’s attack coming. We’re practicing kumitachi number one, a choreographed exercise with bokken, smoothly finished wooden swords of Japanese white oak.

I stand still, waiting for the attack to come, which will send me and my bokken spiraling into the next movement. And my partner’s sword rises smoothly, straight up as he steps in, and then drops toward my head as if to split me down the middle.

In that moment, in the back of my mind, I hear it.

Move.

Now.

But I don’t. In this instant-after all these years of training and all the work-the memory in my muscles and my mind draw a blank and I stand frozen. And thanks to my partner’s presence of mind and concentration, his bokken stops crisply, one inch before crashing into my unprotected forehead.

“What happened?” he says.

“I blanked. Sorry.”

But I knew exactly what should have happened. As his bokken swung down, I should have slid my right foot across the line of attack and raised my weapon, simultaneously protecting my head and the side of my body whilst initiating a quick, powerful circling cut toward the opposite side of my partner’s head.

That’s what should have happened.

And even if I couldn’t remember the correct move, I should have at least let my instinct go, forget everything and move. Just move. Anywhere. Just survive.

But I didn’t. In that one frozen moment, my mind wasn’t just blank. It had stopped like a rusting clockwork. And it cost me my life. A zen mind has the freedom to move in any direction at any moment. A stopped mind goes nowhere. It’s dead.

And that’s where I’ve been this week. Stopped. Blank. Going nowhere.

But now, with this writing, I’m moving. Through this exercise, this training-here in this dojo of the mind-my thinking is again spiraling into its next movement, toward the next moment of life.

Where am I headed? Right now, I’m not sure. But at least I’m moving.