I’ve spent most of the day responding to emails, marketing, blogging, writing more emails, and it was all about Hapkido. I don’t think the hours with my new endeavor are any better, but I can say that it is truly rewarding. What keeps me going at this ungodly hour? I guess it would be passion for what I love doing, anything and everything that is Hapkido. So where’s the lesson from the master? My late master was as I said, a very private man, so without details, I have to say he had the stamina and fortitude I had never seen in my life. When I thought he should have gone home or even not be at the school, he was there. On one day I got a call while working in my office and the master asked me “can you come teach today, now?”. Of course I went, but when I got there, I sat bewildered that the master was even sitting in the office, he was in no condition to be there, but he was. Very few people have that level of fortitude. So as I sit here on the last day of 2009, in the wee hours of this last day, I remember how the master did it, he just did, and never complained. 

Where does intestinal fortitude come from?  Is it a learned behavior, genetic trait, environmental factors, a combination?