As in martial arts, your rent agreement is something that needs to be understood before signing. To delve into the comparison of martial arts philosophies with the law, I’ll emphasize the word commit. Wing Tsun Kung Fu emphasizes commit to a training schedule. You can’t expect to receive the benefits from martial arts training without regular training. A place to start is committing to one or two classes per week if you’re a beginner. The skill sets build off of each other and you won’t know where you are at if you aren’t at the studio training and honing these important training techniques. Similarly, in commercial lease negotiations, you can’t expect the wording and signed lease agreement to favour you, as you need to commit to reading the entire lease agreement. This requires a careful and thorough understanding of the contractual agreement you have with your landlord. If you haven’t committed to reviewing that agreement, then any benefits that may be excluded in the fine print would be a shock. Wing Tsun Kung Fu also teaches commit to your master. This brings with it the philosophy that out of respect for your teacher, you must be there in class and stay committed to your studies. You cannot skip training days, especially when you become experienced, as that becomes careless and will expose you to all the mistakes and mind games of skipping training days. As well, the process of learning Wing Tsun is not linear, meaning, you always have to be present and commit to the content that is taught regardless of whether it is the same cycle of forms and techniques or different ones altogether. In the law of commercial leases, similar obligations exist. You have to know about the landlord meaning, someone who has the right to re-enter. There is a reason why sections 74, 75 and 77 of the Residential Tenancy Act of BC have the word re-entry within and knowing your rights as a tenant upon re-entry is vital to protecting your interests and your security of being able to live within your rental unit. Just as you would commit to attending Wing Tsun classes several times a week, you also want to commit to reading the whole residential tenancy agreement. In a way, your landlord acts like your Wing Tsun teacher or your Sifu in an agreement where that person has committed to being the one responsible party for providing you with a home of your own like training space. When you have Wing Tsun Kung Fu training, you are committed to learning techniques and forms. The learning in Wing Tsun is not from memorization but rather, it is through the concept of learning lessons and then applying them in your life beyond the martial art studio. You will learn all of the forms and techniques the same way you will learn the sections of the residential tenancy agreement. When you have a lease that you have written on a piece of paper and that agreement is something you can fully comprehend, that is what equates to knowing all of the techniques and forms inside of Wing Tsun. That is what a lease agreement and all of the many sections actually represent. Wing Tsun Kung Fu teaches you to also commit to your training. This means that you are to train at that same studio. Your kung fu should be practiced there where it is designated. This ritual of attending the same martial art school regularly creates a habit that is ingrained into your life. In the same way, you are to stay committed to your tenancy and put in the work (perhaps some elbow grease) to clean your rental unit. You are paying for a space to live in, and you want to be fair about the rental unit’s condition. Just as you have to do in martial arts, you need to take responsibility for your actions as a tenant. Wing Tsun Kung Fu teaches you to be responsible for the techniques you learn, and how you don’t go using your skills on others outside of the class atmosphere. In the same way, you get a lot of instructional videos on studying your lease agreement but you aren’t to go to your landlord and start ripping him or her apart as that is disproportionately unfair. You are to be responsible for what you sign, and how you treat your landlord. A parable within martial art is this: You see the empty swimming pool. The Master responds, “Because everybody who learned swimming stopped at intermediate.” The difference is that Wing Tsun Kung Fu is a self-education rather than martial art lessons from someone else. You are to look over all of the rented real estate contracts and then you are to understand the various bits of information. If you are doing this all of the time, you will obviously start to slowly become more accustomed to understanding things that leave your eyes confused upon first reading. Similarly, a Wing Tsun lesson of a form or technique isn’t just practicing what you learn, but rather, it is something that repeats over and over again until you understand the full concept behind the form or technique. In the same way, you are to review the same rental agreement again and again until you start to really understand what a lease is. As martial artists, we need to remind ourselves that everything we do has some relatable philosophy found within the law.