My Story, Through Six Katanas
Six katana. Six moments in my life. Each one came to represent something I needed to learn — determination, discipline, integrity, introspection, rebirth, and finally, integration. This is not a story about swords. It is a story about how objects can quietly become markers of who we were, what we went through, and who we are still becoming.
DEVELOPING PEOPLETHINKING DIFFERENTLY
My Story, Through Six Katanas
I own six katanas.
I did not buy them at the same time.
And although I did not realize it when I started, I was not simply building a collection.
I was leaving markers along my own path.
The first was Determination.
There is a moment in life when thinking is no longer enough.
You have to move.
Determination was important to me because it represented that first decision: choose a direction and begin.
At that point, strength meant moving forward.
But determination has a weakness.
It can start the journey.
It cannot sustain it.
Then came Discipline.
Discipline taught me something determination couldn’t.
Showing up once is relatively easy.
Showing up again tomorrow is different.
And again the day after that.
Discipline made the path less dependent on how I felt that morning.
Strength was beginning to mean something different.
Not intensity.
Consistency.
The third was Rectitude.
Eventually, another question appeared.
Not:
Can I do this?
But:
Should I?
Ability gives us options.
Character helps us choose among them.
Rectitude represented the moment when moving forward was no longer enough.
Direction mattered.
The fourth was Introspection.
This one turned the blade inward.
For years, it had been easier to see what needed to change around me.
A process.
A company.
A system.
Another person.
Introspection asked a less comfortable question:
What if the thing that needs to change is me?
There are battles in which determination helps.
Others require discipline.
But some cannot be won by fighting harder.
They require looking honestly at the person holding the sword.
The fifth was Rebirth.
For a long time, I thought starting again meant leaving something behind.
Now I see it differently.
We don’t begin again empty.
We carry everything with us.
The victories.
The mistakes.
The people we met.
The things we learned too late.
The versions of ourselves we no longer need to be.
Rebirth is not erasing the past.
It is allowing the past to become material for what comes next.
The sixth was Integration.
Perhaps this was the one I understood last.
For years, I had treated my different selves almost as separate people.
The engineer.
The manager.
The teacher.
The student.
The father.
The person who succeeded.
The person who failed.
The person I was.
The person I still wanted to become.
Eventually, I stopped asking which one was the real me.
They all were.
Integration meant no longer needing to defeat the person I used to be in order to become the person I wanted to be.
And that should have completed the collection.
But there is one more sword.
Not a seventh stage.
A consequence.
A sakabatō.
A reverse-blade sword.
Its edge faces the opposite direction.
And perhaps that is the one that says the most about where the other six eventually led me.
When I was younger, strength meant being able to draw the sword.
To act.
To push.
To prove.
To win.
Today, I find myself increasingly interested in another kind of strength.
Knowing when not to.
Determination taught me to draw the sword.
Discipline taught me to practice with it.
Rectitude taught me to ask why I was drawing it.
Introspection taught me to turn it toward myself.
Rebirth taught me that I could put it down and begin again.
Integration taught me that I no longer needed to fight every previous version of myself.
And the sakabatō reminds me that perhaps the final purpose of learning to use a sword is not becoming better at cutting.
It is becoming wise enough to know when the blade is unnecessary.
刃を返し 心を磨く
Turn the blade. Polish the heart.
Perhaps that is the journey after all.
武者から先生へ
From warrior to teacher.