Whether they are ready or not, today's kids are the leaders of tomorrow, some are going to be running the world someday. No matter what your particular individual political viewpoint, it is plainly obvious the world desperately needs more leaders exhibiting compassion and creating harmony. How can we best nurture these kind heroic statesmen the world so desperately needs today, and for the future.

Aikido being a peaceful art, is at odds with all the war and strife that seems to constantly dominate our lives and the evening news. As martial artists we should not shy from conflict or chaos, indeed, these are the very elements we are training to help resolve, to render harmless in a harmonious and orderly manner. Only by embracing the concept and individual manifestations of conflict, can we, as peacemakers, actually have the harmonious impact we are training to be capable of.

Heroes seem to emerge whenever a real crisis threatens a community or a nation. The evil of Hitler’s Germany was met by the resoluteness of Winston Churchill, Khrushchev was matched by John Kennedy, and Klansmen and segregation by Martin Luther King. Since heroes almost always appear when they are needed, it seems obvious that there must be some number of potential heroes constantly milling around waiting for a crisis to propel at least one of them to greatness. Thus an important role of conflict or crisis is to focus people’s attention and bring out our most heroic behaviors - whether this is a battalion charging into battle, or firefighters charging up the stairs of the World Trade Centre.

If we want to survive the next decade or so, our little planet is going to have to come up with workable solutions to a variety of difficulties - economic, environmental, political, ethnic, technological, religious, etc. If we want to survive, we must quickly figure out how to unkindle the fires alight under the tinder of religious militancy, how to guide nations out from under the shadow of the Communist Party, how to balance the legitimate needs of industry with the sustainable limits to environmental resources, how to prevent the spread of fissionable materials and technologies, and how to overcome the enormous economic influence of arms merchants, drug smugglers, and tobacco companies. These solutions, whatever they are, will not come from the barrel of a gun or the blade of a flashing sword; the problems we as a planet face are simply not the type that can be cured by violence. We have many good soldiers doing what soldiers do in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, but in the grand scheme of things our problems will not be solved by soldiers but by statesman.

All the problems we face are rooted in, and nourished by, conflict. Aikido teaches us that the most effective approach to conflict resolution is not to "become stronger than one's opponent" because the only real opponent is the conflict itself. Instead, one must act as the catalyst by which the conflict itself is eliminated. Aikido training can help us to become such a catalyst, both on and off the mat. Doctors, environmental lawyers, and social workers, all contributing nobly to society, all engaged in an attack on the symptoms of society's discontents, rather than on the cause. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, but only one who is striking at the root," - I believe Aikido training can help us become the “one striking the root”.

Attack the root of the problem, rather than the events spawned from the problem. Would it not have been easier and wiser for Heracles to have crept up behind the Hydra to strike her down, rather than frantically attacking all of its heads from the front. Today though is more complex than the one that the Greek hero had to grapple with, vanquishing our enemy with a few mighty sword strokes is no longer an option. The Greeks saw life's challenges as pairings of monsters and heroes. On our field of battle is the Hydra: venomous, wounded, dangerous, and alone. Many heads quarelling, creating conflict, it is these heads, connected to the hydra body that must learn to wage peace.

Thus the challenge to the contemporary would-be hero is unclear, we live in a world without dragons to slay and damsels to rescue from distress. Being a knight in shining armour was a lot easier when the bad guys wore black and the “good” thing to do was stick your sword though them a few times. The ultimate challenge, however, of conquering our own demons, is still available to us would-be heroes centuries after dragon slaying became unfashionable. Nevertheless, living an enlightened life, as challenging as that may be, seems like it might not be enough when so much of our world is going to hell - if that enlightened life is played out quietly off the main stage of the world’s events. What's all this got to do with kids studying Aikido you ask ?

There may only be a few hundred thousand Aikidoka scattered around the planet, a group which constitutes a veritable army of harmonious change - if we do not put this healing into practice, who will? If our art is unable to resolve the conflicts that plague us, what art can? If we do not believe that training children in Aikido improves their chances of waging peace as adults, why do we teach this to kids? If we do not keep our expectations high and believe our students must be made ready to take on the world's great challenges, how can they be prepared to do so?

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." While there is nothing wrong with using aikido to teach kids to be a bit more coordinated and a bit more confident, it is not enough; we must, as teachers of children, also wield aikido to create the kind of thoughtful, committed citizens that can manifest the art's potential for leadership and healing.

The practice of war, which mankind seems so reluctant or unable to give up, is good at drawing out the heroes from our midst. But surely it is a bad price to pay to find those heroes. Aikido training, however, has the potential to be groomed into the moral equivalent of war - for if it is war that awakens the great heroes amongst us - it will be the moral equivalent of war that will, without any violence and chaos required, awaken the great statesmen.