The Space Between Punches

The wrap betrays me first—fingers moving through a ritual that lost its meaning somewhere between the hundredth repetition and now. Thirty-three years of accumulated nothing wrapped methodically around knuckles that punch at shadows, each turn of fabric both emptying and filling the space between intention and action. The Damansara gym's fans spin overhead like tired sentinels, pushing thick air that carries the memory of countless fighters before me. Just a fortnight into this new chapter, and already the unfamiliar feels honest in a way that Singapore—with its manicured ambitions—never managed.

In the mirrors that line these walls, fragments of a man who might have been something reflect back at me: the ex-gym owner, the former equity consultant, the failed fighter who continues this stubborn pursuit. Sometimes, I wonder what my corporate clients would think if they saw me here, shadowboxing in a modest gym tucked away in a quieter corner of Kuala Lumpur. How do you explain to people who measure worth in quarterly projections that meaning can be found in the space between punches, in this endless pursuit of something that refuses to be caught?

My new coach watches my form with measured patience. "Keep your weight on the back foot," he says, eyes catching subtle flaws in my movement. "For a southpaw, it's about creating the right angle." His own stance shifts, demonstrating how minor adjustments change everything. In these moments of technical precision, I find echoes of gaman (我慢), this patient endurance of what seems impossible, a concept I learned climbing Mt. Aso in Japan last October. Gasping for breath beside local friends, I first heard the term that would come to define my journey—now it resurfaces with each correction, each minor adjustment, each moment of choosing to persist in the face of uncertainty.

The body remembers what the mind tries to forget—past ventures, false starts, moments when ambition outpaced wisdom. Singapore taught me that lesson in ways both subtle and profound. Each wrapped hand carries the weight of those years: the gym we built and lost, the ventures that crumbled under the city's relentless pace, the countless small surrenders that eventually led to this moment. Suddenly losing half my hearing became the city's final verdict, leaving me with hard-earned wisdom about the fragility of our bodies and our dreams, about how quickly certainty can dissolve into doubt.

Night after night, surrounded by the city's restless glow, I confronted the carefully constructed facade of my life: a growing equity consulting firm, just me and two part-time employees, speaking the language of quarterly projections while my soul yearned for the honest simplicity of the ring. The decision to leave emerged not as a sudden epiphany but as a slow-building certainty, each sleepless night adding weight to an inevitable conclusion that somehow still feels unresolved.

My singular opportunity to fight in Singapore arrived unexpectedly—not nationally sanctioned, but a chance to compete on home soil. Under the artificial light of a ballroom, my body moved with the jerky desperation of a marionette, betraying years of training with each telegraphed punch and clumsy dodge. Pride crumbled under the weight of my own inadequacy as I watched myself unravel, throwing away the singular chance I'd been given. The defeat carried the bitter taste of self-sabotage, of letting fear win when opportunity had finally knocked—or perhaps it was wisdom finally overcoming pride.

Looking back now, from the quiet of this Damansara gym, those experiences feel less like failures and more like necessary steps—each one teaching me something about the difference between fighting and forcing, between ambition and authenticity. Here, that understanding finds new resonance. Age raises no eyebrows—a thirty-three-year-old stepping into the ring is just another person walking the path. Fighters in their thirties, forties even, still command the ring with weathered grace, each movement distilled by time and persistence. Unlike Singapore's commercial gyms with their Instagram-ready setups, here, the training strips away pretense, revealing something more essential.

I see this most clearly in our technical work. The coach's paddle mitt combinations demand precision—each movement building on the last, forcing me to think through every adjustment. "Step inside their lead foot," he demonstrates, showing how vulnerability can become an opportunity. "Now you're in position for the left uppercut." It's in these moments of transition that I'm reminded of what I learned in Japan about ma (間)—the powerful negative space that gives meaning to what surrounds it. I discovered this concept through an elderly couple and their daughter in Taketa, crafting Hime Daruma dolls with careful precision. These dolls, nearly vanished during World War II, were revived by a craftsman who saw in their wobbling persistence something worth preserving—a heartfelt reminder that falling down is just the first half of the motion, though the second half remains perpetually uncertain.

What struck me wasn't just their brushstrokes but the deliberate pauses between them, the same way I now find meaning in the micro-adjustments between punches, in the weight shifts that set up the next move, in the breath between exchanges.

Between combinations, a thought surfaces—not of future fights, but of this present moment. There's a peculiar freedom in training not for some future glory, but for the raw immediacy of each punch. In embracing the chance that all this preparation might lead to nothing more than the preparation itself, might amount to another form of accumulated nothing. Perhaps this is what those Daruma craftsmen understood: that meaning lives not in the outcome but in the patient attention to each moment, to the patient attention of uncertainty itself.

Three sessions a week, I wrap my hands and step into this space between what was and what could be. The answers don't come any easier in this new city, but maybe that's not what I'm looking for anymore. I find my equilibrium in unlikely places—in the continued pursuit, in the daily practice that transforms futility into purpose, or perhaps purpose into futility.

Let them wonder why a thirty-three-year-old man throws punches at shadows. In the space between combinations, in the pause between rounds, something transforms, though I couldn't tell you what. We discover our strength not in the striking but in the spaces between—in those sacred moments of gathering ourselves to rise again, finding meaning not in victory, in this dance with uncertainty that might be all we ever truly possess.