Creo Loo

Bruce Lee: “Honestly expressing yourself is the hardest thing to do” "To me, ultimately, martial art means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. I mean, it's easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool. Or I can make all kinds of phony things. Or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, that, my friend, is very hard to do." Bruce explains the balance between instinct and control: "Here is natural instinct, and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you'll be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you become a mechanical man, no longer a human being. So the ideal is unnatural naturalness, or natural unnaturalness." On why he doesn't believe in fixed styles: "If you do not have styles, if you just say, 'Here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely?' that way, you won't create a style. Because style is a crystallization. That way is a process of continuing growth." He shares the philosophy behind staying in motion: "The idea is: running water never grows stale. So you've got to just keep on flowing." Bruce explains what true training means: "You have to train. You have to keep your reflexes so that when you want it, it's there. When you want to move, you are moving. And when you move, you are determined to move. Not taking one inch less than that. If I want to punch, I'm going to do it, man. And I'm going to do it." He concludes with his most famous philosophy: "Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend."