Coolest yearbook signature ever!

A huge mentor and friend from high school (He was a Psychology teacher at the time) signed my Senior Yearbook with this awesome phrase and I've never forgot it. Even picked it apart. (How can someone write something so profound yet brief!?) Anyway - here it is.

“So now the journey begins into the void, roll gently into life, and watch your back.”

1. Enter the Void Without Fear. The warrior’s path begins where certainty ends. Step into the unknown with a calm mind and a steady breath — this is the threshold of true transformation. The void is not emptiness; it is potential waiting to be shaped by awareness. (Musashi: “In the void is virtue, and no evil.”)

2. Roll Gently Into the Flow of Life. The samurai, the Aikidoka all understand: force fractures flow. Move in harmony with what is, not in resistance to it. To “roll gently” is to remain fluid under pressure — adaptable, responsive, and unshakably centered. Power without tension.

3. Stay Awake — Always. “Watch your back” is not paranoia; it is Zanshin — the ever-present awareness that no moment is ordinary. Stay alert even in stillness. Maintain vigilance in victory and humility in peace. The true warrior sleeps with one eye open — the eye of consciousness.

4. Balance Stillness and Readiness. Gentleness without readiness becomes weakness; readiness without gentleness becomes aggression. The mastery lies in merging them — like water that yields yet destroys stone. This is the field of relaxed power, where timing and awareness become one.

5. Transform the Journey Into Inner Evolution. The outward path — the training, the challenges, the victories — mirrors the inner one. The void is within. As the body moves, the mind refines; as awareness expands, the self dissolves. Each step is both an act of mastery and a return to origin.