Smrikva Bowl Mission
The Mission Dream
Smrikva Bowl mission is to inspire, develop and spread cosmopolitan values. Love, friendship and empathy are cosmopolitan values per excellence for people and humanity…
CULTURE, CHILDREN, SPORT, MUSIC and NATURE are part of the Smrikva Bowl idea of the cosmopolitan world. It is a matter of civilization …
A wise wind, product of imagination, once whispered… “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.” (M.Y.)… and fairy tales seems to help that beauty…
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” (A.E.)…
Usually in tennis game it does not matter what goes wrong but your reaction to it…
Fear and anger are for the brain the same as cramps for the muscles… and as Yoda noted “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”… like in tennis, so similar seems to be life…
There are different ways to look at sport. There are different ways to look at music, culture, love and also to children.
The vision of sport preferred in Smrikve can be described and extended to: culture, music and children using the following Nelson Mandela – Madiba’s words:
“Sport has the power to change the world, the power to inspire and the power to unite people in a way little else does – it is an instrument of peace. It speaks to youth in a language they understand.”
For the following song I would say “Music and children have the power to change the world, the power to inspire and the power to unite people in a way little else can – there are both instruments of peace.” :)
… a wise men living in China 2500 years ago once observed… “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.” … and to set your heart right you need good characters… those who wish to contribute to the greater public good had to begin by working on themselves…
…only then they will see progress radiate out from their personal circles to society at large…
The same Grandmother Willow tried to pass to John Smith in Pocahontas…
Grandmother Willow: Now then, there’s something I want to show you. Look.
[dips her vine in the water in which glowing ripples begin to form]
Pocahontas: The ripples.
John Smith: What about them?
Grandmother Willow: So small at first, then look how they grow. But someone has to start them…
Smrikve, April 2009
FEW WORDS ABOUT L…
The strongest force among human beings is named “Love”. Love can be very powerful but can also be very painful force.
THE LITTLE PRINCE…by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry… is a very special book that every person at different age read differently.
It is a book that last over time and was likely the last love gift Antoine de Saint-Exupéry made to his wife Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry.
Over time this book was translated in many different languages thus become a love gift for many generations around the world.
It is a children’s book written for the older… I like many parts of it… especially the description that Antoine make of the adult people… the description of the moment when the rose was born… the importance of the right orders on the King’s planet… “you never know” statement… the meeting with the wise fox… the smiling stars and many other parts…
Only best friends, when they trust each other, do share their deep knowledge… and once The Little Prince and the fox created such a special relationship the fox shared a secret with him…
“Goodbye, said the fox. And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry believed that: Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.… “Ljubav ne zahtjeva da dvoje ljudi gledaju jedno u drugo, već da zajedno gledaju u istom pravcu”.
Miodrag Bozovic
Smrikve, March 2023
LOVE & “BE WATER MY FRIEND”…
Shannon Lee did her best to pass part of the teachings and legacy of her father… the Legendary Bruce Lee..
He was much more than a Kung Fu Master… and I am pleased to share just few lines that impressed me the most in Shannon’s book about Bruce Lee view on possible relationships among people and differences… on pages 218-220 Shanon writes:
„… Many people who protest against certain groups of people suddenly change their tune when they discover personal connection with someone who may be different from them, or when they come to know and love someone who is different from them…“
„… Traditions and institutions can have their benefits, but they do and always will have their limitations, too. An organization or system of belief that has its rules and traditions will always not include someone. Someone will be pushed outside of the boundaries and made „other“.“….
Bruce Lee’s Master, Shifu, coach or teacher was Yip Man… the Legendary martial arts figure… he is the one who passed the wing chun teachings to Bruce Lee… but there is an important story I was not familiar with that I discovered in his daughter’s book related with his wing chun lessons that for sure had impact on Bruce Lee legacy…
Here is what Shannon writes: “When my father was a teenager at Yip Man’s wing chun gung fu school, he was kicked out. Not for bad behavior, but for not being 100 percent Chinese. It was found out that my father’s mother was half European , making my father only three-quarters Chinese. The tradition of the time made it such that he could not be considered fully Chinese and thereby he was not allowed to learn Chinese gung fu – and so an uproar ensued. Yip Man did not want to expel my father. In fact, my father was one of his best students, but he could not keep the peace within his school without throwing my father out because the other students threatened to quit if he stayed. This was his livelihood, so Yip Man compiled with tradition.
In a work-around, Yip Man continued to train my father in private and have one of his most senior students, Wong Shun Leung, train him as well. But he could not keep him in class. Maybe it was partly this experience that cemented in my father his later policy of taking anyone to his school who had a sincere desire to learn, regardless of their race, gender, or background. Maybe it was being a kid growing up in Japanese- occupied Hong Kong during World War II. Maybe it was his commitment to his Taoist philosophical understandings. But the „human first“ policy is one I feel we can and really need to all adopt as our barrier to entry for humanity.
My mother always said about my father that he looked straight across at people. Meaning, he looked them in the eye rather than at the embellishments of their outside packaging. His upbringing was such that there were many factors that contributed to this attitude. First of all, he was born in America but raised in Hong Kong. His mother was part European and so he was too. He lived in a primarily Chinese city, but it was governed by the British. He worked in the acting industry as a child, so he spent time around many adults and people with a more creatively open disposition. He experienced racism and prejudice often throughout his life – for being too Chinese in Hollywood and for being too Western in Hong Kong. He often did not have a tribe to call his own other than his nuclear family, and so he had to make the conscious choice of being exclusive or inclusive. And being inclusive gave him access to many more people, ideas, experiences, friendships, and possibilities. It made his world bigger and more interesting.“
… and after expressing her thoughts Shannon Lee in her book share her father’s original words… and on the above subject Bruce Lee wrote the following: „Many people are still bounded by tradition, when the elder generations say „no“ to something, then these people will strongly disapprove of it as well. If the elders say that something is wrong, then they also will believe that it is wrong. They seldom use their mind to find out the truth and seldom express sincerely their real feeling. The simply truth is that these opinions on such things as racism are traditions, which are nothing more than a „formula“ laid down by these elder people’s experiences. As we progress and time changes, it is necessary to reform this formula. I, Bruce Lee, am a man who never follows the formulas of these fear-mongers. So no matter if your color is black or white, red or blue. I can still make friends with you without any barrier. In saying that „everyone under the sun is a member of a universal family,“ you may think that I am idealistic. But if anyone still believes in things like racial differences, I think they are too narrow. Perhaps they still do not understand love.“
It is an inspiring book about teachings of a self made man who strongly believed in hard work in order to develop his full potential… and the above is just a small part of Bruce Lee philosophy… I invite each SB seed to try to understand the description of the meaning “be water my friend” Shannon Lee share in her book… it is a hidden key to unlock the full potential of the mental part for a tennis player who dream to reach the peak of ATP/WTA mountain…
Miodrag Bozovic
Please visit www.smrikve.com to learn more about Smrikve, Istria from Smrikve, Smrikva Bowl, one of the most important under 10 tennis tournaments in the World, and Villa Smrikve, for your accommodation with swimming pool in Stinjan (Pula – Pola) if you decide to spent your holiday in Istria, Croatia.
