Style Separates

It gives us a platform. It beckons followers. It provides us with the enemy we so desperately desire.

Humans have favorites.

Favorite movies. Favorite foods. Favorite friends. And a whole lot of favorite beliefs. And if we’re not careful, favorites become little more than dogmatic prisons we can’t escape.

Today we call this style.

Simply take whatever favored methodology you can find and warp it into something that appears new and innovative. Bring your own “style” to it. Do it your way.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes “the way it’s always been done” needs work. We call that a revolution.

But sometimes style separates, making several divergent paths that stifle progress. Bruce Lee knew this. That’s why he said, “absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.”

It’s why he created a martial arts practice free from the doctrine and rigidity that prevented so many before him from achieving mastery.