“WHO’S PACKING YOUR PARACHUTE”

This is part of a forwarded e-mail that I received a few weeks ago. I passed it on to a few individuals.
 Now I would like to share its message with you. 
 
“Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed
by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent
6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned 
from that experience! One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another 
table came up and said, ‘You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty
Hawk. You were shot down!’ ‘How in the world did you know that?’ Asked Plumb. ‘I packed your 
parachute,’ the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said,
’I guess it worked!’ Plumb assured him, ‘It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here
today.’ Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says,’ I kept wondering what he
had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers .I wonder how
many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘Good Morning, How Are You?’ or anything because, 
you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor’. Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had 
spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks
of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know. Now, Plumb asks his 
audience, ‘Who’s packing your parachute?’ Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make 
it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot
down over enemy territory—he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional 
parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.”

How does this relate to our martial arts training? 

Training at the dojo comes from many sources. We start as novices. We come from different walks of life. 
Some are young. We learn from our sensei and the other instructors at the dojo. They begin packing our 
parachutes. They prepare us for the day we parachute into the field of competition, or the day we have to 
defend our selves on the street. We learn the physical skills within the art. We are taught to be mentally and 
emotionally prepared to deal with stressful confrontations. 

As we mature in the martial arts universe, we tend to forget those that had a hand in packing our parachutes. 
We all know who those individuals are. Should we wait until they come to “our table” and remind us of their
role in packing our parachute? The answer is no. We should always acknowledge and be grateful for their 
role in packing our parachutes. Also, when we see them, tell them thank you and that they did a good job 
packing your parachute.

Respectfully
Maurice Msarsa


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