Reflections on a lifetime of being shaped, reshaped, and discovering that the journey is far from over.
The Quiet Hours Before Sunrise
This morning, Wednesday, October 14, 2026, I woke up at 2:22 a.m. Yesterday, it was 3:33 a.m. I smiled at the coincidence. There’s something about those quiet hours when most of the world is sleeping that invites me to sit with my thoughts, listen to my heart, and reflect on the life I’ve lived. I’ve come to appreciate these early mornings, when there are fewer distractions and I can give my attention to the thoughts and feelings that sometimes get lost in the busyness of the day.
I found myself working on my personal website, creating a place where people who have crossed paths with me over the years could share their stories. Not simply reviews or testimonials, rather memories of how we met, the experiences we shared, and perhaps something meaningful we learned from one another along the way. As I worked, I began thinking about all the people who have been part of my journey. Some have known me for decades. Others crossed my path for a brief moment. Some were students, parents, teachers, mentors, fellow performers, martial artists, friends, and even strangers whose kindness arrived at just the right time. I began to recognize something that has become increasingly meaningful to me as I’ve grown older. My life has never been shaped by my experiences alone. It has also been shaped by the people who shared those experiences with me.
Eventually, I went back to bed for a little more rest. Something I’ve learned to appreciate at 65 is that listening to your body is just as important as listening to your ambitions. When I got up again, I spent some time with my morning devotional from Our Daily Bread. The reading was about a potter working with clay, and it brought me back to a thought that has been growing in my heart over the past several days. At this stage of my life, after everything I’ve experienced, everything I’ve learned, and everything that has changed, I am still becoming.
The Potter and the Clay
The devotional came from Jeremiah 18, where the prophet observes a potter working at his wheel. As the potter shapes a vessel, something goes wrong. The clay becomes marred in his hands. Rather than abandoning it, the potter begins again, reshaping the clay into another vessel. That image stayed with me because I began thinking about the many times in my own life when things didn’t turn out the way I imagined. The plans that changed, the opportunities that disappeared, the relationships that taught me difficult lessons, and the moments of loss, disappointment, uncertainty, and heartbreak. There were times when I thought I understood exactly where my life was going, only to discover that life had another lesson waiting for me.
And yet, here I am at 65 years old, still learning, still growing, and still discovering new possibilities. My faith teaches me that God’s hands have never stopped working in my life, and my experiences have taught me that being reshaped doesn’t mean that what came before was wasted. Sometimes the very experiences we wish we could have avoided become the ones that teach us the most about compassion, courage, patience, forgiveness, and love. I don’t believe we have to celebrate every hardship to appreciate what we’ve learned through it. Some experiences leave wounds that take years to understand, and some losses remain with us for a lifetime. Still, we can carry those experiences forward with greater wisdom and a deeper appreciation for what it means to be human.
Perhaps the question isn’t why life keeps reshaping us. Perhaps the more meaningful question is what we’re becoming through the process. That thought has been particularly important to me lately because I find myself standing in a new season of life, one I didn’t necessarily anticipate, yet one that continues inviting me to grow.
The Boy From the South Bronx
When I think about being shaped by life, my thoughts often return to the South Bronx, where my journey began. I think about the little Puerto Rican boy growing up in an environment where life could be unpredictable, where hardship was part of everyday existence, and where learning to survive sometimes came long before learning to understand yourself. That boy didn’t know what his future would hold. He didn’t know that martial arts would become one of the great teachers of his life, or that one day he would find himself dancing and performing on stages around the world. He didn’t know he would become a husband, a father, a grandfather, an author, or a teacher who would spend almost thirty years serving children and families in a community far from the streets where he grew up.
He certainly didn’t know how much he would have to learn about love, loss, responsibility, resilience, and what it means to be a human being. He was simply doing what he could with what he knew at the time. Looking back, I have a great deal of compassion for that boy. There are things I wish he had understood sooner, moments I wish he could have experienced differently, and lessons I wish someone had sat down and explained to him. I remember times when I was frightened, confused, and uncertain about where I belonged. I also remember the people who showed me kindness, sometimes through gestures so ordinary that I didn’t fully appreciate their significance until many years later.
Today, I recognize that the man writing these words was shaped by the journey that boy traveled. I cannot change where I began, and I wouldn’t want to erase the lessons that helped bring me here. What I can do is appreciate how far I’ve traveled and the people who helped me find my way. I can look back with greater understanding rather than judgment, recognizing that growth often begins long before we realize it’s happening. That boy from the South Bronx is still part of me, and in many ways, I’m still learning to give him the understanding and compassion he needed all those years ago.
The People Who Helped Shape the Man
One of the greatest gifts of growing older is beginning to recognize just how many people have contributed to the person you’ve become. I’ve had teachers who challenged me, mentors who believed in me, friends who stood beside me, and people who offered kindness when they had no obligation to do so. I’ve had the privilege of working with extraordinary performers, martial artists, educators, parents, and children. I’ve learned from people much older than me and from children young enough to be my grandchildren. Some of my most important lessons came from people who probably never realized they were teaching me anything.
Sometimes it was a simple conversation, a word of encouragement, someone offering me a place to stay, or a teacher taking the time to see something in me that I couldn’t yet see in myself. Those moments matter. Over the years, I’ve often thought about how differently I might have experienced certain moments if I had understood their importance while they were happening. If I had known how important those moments were, I would have paid more attention. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I write today. I want to pay attention now. I want to recognize the people, the lessons, and the defining moments while I still have the opportunity to appreciate them.
Recently, I began creating a place on my website where people could share memories of how our lives intersected. As I thought about that project, I realized it wasn’t simply about collecting stories from the past. It was about honoring the relationships that continue to live within us, even when circumstances change or years pass without seeing one another. Some people become part of our lives for a season, while others remain for decades. Some teach us through encouragement, and others challenge us in ways we may not appreciate until much later. Each relationship has the potential to leave us with something meaningful.
To everyone who has been part of my journey, I want you to know that you matter to my story. Whether we spent years together or shared only a brief chapter, our paths crossed, and something of that experience became part of the life I carry with me today.
The Teacher Who Is Still a Student
For almost thirty years, I had the privilege of teaching martial arts and helping families nurture confidence, discipline, respect, courage, and character in their children. I often reminded my students that martial arts was about much more than learning how to kick, punch, block, or defend themselves. It was about learning how to live. How to manage your emotions, how to respond when things don’t go your way, how to treat others with dignity, how to recognize your responsibilities, and how to find the courage to continue when life becomes difficult. I taught those lessons because I believed in them, and because I had experienced firsthand how powerful they could be.
Today, I find myself leaning on those very same lessons in ways I could not have anticipated. Life has a remarkable way of reminding us that understanding a principle and living that principle are two different experiences. It’s one thing to speak about courage when life feels comfortable. It’s another to practice courage when the future is uncertain. It’s one thing to teach patience and another to practice patience when answers aren’t arriving as quickly as you’d like. It’s one thing to encourage someone to believe in themselves and another to look in the mirror during a difficult season and offer yourself that same encouragement.
Over the years, I developed a way of approaching challenging moments that I often refer to as bringing my A-Game: awareness, assessment, and right appropriate action. It begins with becoming aware of what’s happening, taking time to understand the situation, and choosing a response that serves the moment rather than simply reacting to it. Three questions have become especially valuable to me: What can I do to make this better? What can I do to not make it worse? What am I missing here? These questions have helped me in teaching, leadership, relationships, and the many situations life has placed before me. And now, as I navigate a new chapter, I find myself returning to them again.
I am reminded that the lessons we teach others do not somehow exempt us from having to practice them ourselves. In fact, some of our greatest opportunities for growth come when life asks us to live what we’ve spent years encouraging others to understand. I continue to discover that martial arts is life, and life is martial arts. The training doesn’t end when we leave the classroom or step off the mat. It continues in our conversations, our decisions, our relationships, and the way we carry ourselves through difficult circumstances. After all these years, I remain a student, still learning to become more skillful at being human.
An Eagle With Its Wings Open
Yesterday, something shifted in the way I was looking at my life. I had this image of an eagle standing with its wings spread wide. It wasn’t soaring through the sky, circling above the mountains, or riding the currents of the wind. It was simply standing there, wings open, prepared for what might come next. And for some reason, that image described exactly how I was feeling. I wasn’t imagining myself having arrived at some great destination or having overcome every challenge before me. I was simply recognizing that I had reached a moment in life when I could begin to appreciate everything that had prepared me for the journey ahead.
For much of my life, I’ve been moving. Working, teaching, performing, building, providing, helping, solving problems, and responding to whatever life placed in front of me. Now, at 65, I’m experiencing a season that invites me to look at all those years from a different perspective. I’m beginning to recognize that the experiences I’ve accumulated are not simply memories of what I’ve done. They are part of what has prepared me for what comes next. The hardships of my childhood taught me resilience. The performing arts taught me expression, discipline, and the courage to be seen. Martial arts taught me awareness, responsibility, and self-control. Marriage and fatherhood taught me lessons about love and commitment that no classroom could ever fully explain. Teaching children and working with families taught me the importance of seeing the human being before seeing the behavior. And the difficult seasons of life have continued teaching me humility, compassion, and the importance of asking for help.
All of those experiences have contributed to the strength of my wings. I haven’t begun soaring into this next chapter yet, and that’s okay. For the first time in a long time, I’m giving myself permission to appreciate the wings before worrying about the flight. There’s something freeing about that realization. I don’t have to know exactly where the winds will carry me to recognize that I have developed the strength, wisdom, and experience to meet what comes next. I can stand where I am today, acknowledge the uncertainty, and still feel grateful for the journey that brought me here.
Gratitude Changes What We See
Something else has been happening within me lately. I’m becoming increasingly aware of how much I have to be grateful for, even while facing circumstances I would not have chosen. Gratitude doesn’t require us to pretend that life is easy, and it doesn’t erase our concerns, responsibilities, or disappointments. It simply invites us to recognize that our difficulties are not the whole story. I can acknowledge uncertainty and still appreciate the love of my family. I can face challenges and still be grateful for my health, my ability to move, my desire to learn, and the opportunities that remain before me. I can recognize what has changed in my life while appreciating everything that those earlier chapters gave me.
Perhaps most importantly, I can appreciate the people who continue to walk alongside me. My wife, my children, my grandson, my friends, my teachers, my former students, the families I’ve served, and the many people who have reached out with kindness and encouragement. Their presence reminds me that whatever chapter of life we’re living, we were never meant to live it entirely alone. There have been moments in my life when I believed strength meant carrying everything myself. Experience has taught me otherwise. Sometimes strength looks like standing tall, sometimes it looks like reaching out, and sometimes it means allowing someone who cares about you to walk beside you.
I’ve come to believe that gratitude changes the way we experience our circumstances. When we focus exclusively on what is missing, what has changed, or what hasn’t worked out, it becomes easy to overlook the good that remains. When we take time to appreciate the people, experiences, and opportunities still present in our lives, we begin to see possibilities that may have been hidden by our concerns. That doesn’t mean every problem suddenly disappears. It means we approach those problems with a fuller understanding of the life we’re living.
We Are Never Finished Becoming
One of the ideas I explore in my book, Living Strong Through Martial Arts: A Lifetime Journey of Martial Virtue, is that our experiences become especially valuable when we take the time to reflect on what they are teaching us. Life is filled with defining moments. Some arrive with celebration and joy. Others arrive quietly, disguised as ordinary conversations or unexpected changes. And some arrive through experiences that challenge everything we thought we understood. What makes those moments meaningful is not simply what happens to us. It’s how we respond, what we learn, and what we choose to carry forward.
I’ve come to understand that growth doesn’t have an expiration date. We don’t reach a certain age and suddenly become finished human beings. We can continue learning at 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and beyond. We can become more patient, more compassionate, more courageous, more understanding, more willing to listen, and more comfortable acknowledging what we don’t know. We can also learn to forgive ourselves for not having understood yesterday what we understand today. That’s an important lesson, especially as we grow older and begin reflecting on decisions we made when we had far less experience and understanding than we have now.
There are decisions I made earlier in life that I would approach differently today. There are conversations I wish I could revisit and moments when I wish I had responded with greater wisdom. Yet I cannot hold the younger version of myself accountable for wisdom he had not yet acquired. What I can do is honor those lessons by living differently today. The goal isn’t to become a perfect human being. It’s to continue becoming a more thoughtful, compassionate, and skillful one. And perhaps that’s one of the most encouraging things we can recognize about life: as long as we’re here, there remains an opportunity to grow.
To Everyone Who Has Walked Beside Me
As I sit here writing this morning, I want to speak directly to the people who have been part of my life. Thank you for the conversations, the laughter, the challenges, the encouragement, and the memories. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your families, your children’s lives, your training, your personal journeys, and your defining moments. Thank you to those who saw something in me before I recognized it myself, and to those who challenged me to grow. And thank you to those who have reached out during this season of my life to remind me that the relationships we’ve built over the years extend far beyond any classroom, school, stage, or organization.
I hope that somewhere along our shared journey, something I said, something I taught, or perhaps simply a moment we experienced together helped you recognize a little more of your own strength and potential. Because that has always been at the heart of what I wanted to do. Help people recognize the good within themselves, understand that their circumstances do not have to define their entire story, and discover that they are capable of becoming more than they may have imagined. Perhaps, through all those years of helping others discover those things, I was also learning to recognize them within myself.
The older I become, the more I appreciate that the value of our lives cannot be measured only by the things we’ve accomplished. It can also be found in the relationships we’ve nurtured, the kindness we’ve offered, the lessons we’ve shared, and the moments when we helped someone feel seen, heard, appreciated, and valued. Those are the things I find myself thinking about more often these days. Those are the memories I want to preserve, the stories I want to tell, and the connections I hope will continue growing in the years ahead.
Your Wings Have Been Growing, Too
If you’ve stayed with me this far, I’d like to invite you to reflect on your own journey. Think about the person you were ten years ago, twenty years ago, perhaps even as a child. Think about the challenges you’ve faced, the people you’ve loved, the disappointments you’ve experienced, and the moments when life required more of you than you believed you had to give. Now consider the human being you’ve become. Not simply your accomplishments, your titles, your possessions, or your responsibilities. Consider your patience, your understanding, your compassion, your courage, and your ability to recognize someone else’s pain because you’ve experienced pain yourself.
Consider the wisdom you’ve gained through experiences you never would have chosen. Perhaps there are parts of your story that still feel unfinished, relationships that need healing, dreams you’ve set aside, or questions about what comes next. I understand that feeling. And perhaps, for a moment, you can give yourself permission to appreciate how far you’ve come without comparing your journey to anyone else’s. You may not be where you hoped you would be, and you may still be standing at the edge of something unfamiliar. That doesn’t erase the strength you’ve developed or the good that remains possible in your life.
I’ve spent much of my life reminding people that they are stronger than they think. Today, I’m reminding myself of that same truth. Your wings may have been growing through experiences you didn’t fully understand at the time. The challenges you’ve faced, the people who’ve loved you, the lessons you’ve learned, and the courage you’ve demonstrated in difficult moments have all contributed to the human being you are today. Perhaps this is your season to recognize those wings and begin considering where they might carry you next.
This Is Not a Comeback. It’s an Evolution.
As I reflect on the devotional that began my morning, I keep returning to the image of the potter and the clay. The clay is shaped, reshaped, and given new form. Its story doesn’t end because the original shape changes, and neither does ours. At 65, I’m not interested in returning to who I used to be. I’m grateful for that man and everything he experienced, learned, accomplished, and contributed. I’m interested in discovering who I can become with everything I know today. A little wiser, a little more patient, a little more compassionate, and a little more aware of how precious our time together truly is.
I don’t know exactly what the next chapter of my life will look like. I have hopes, dreams, plans, and work that I believe is still mine to do. I also understand that life may continue reshaping those plans, and I’m learning to be at peace with that. This morning, my heart is filled with gratitude for the journey, for the people who have shared it with me, and for the opportunity to continue growing. I think about that eagle standing with its wings open, the wind beginning to move, and the possibilities waiting beyond what it can presently see. I find myself looking toward the future with that same sense of anticipation, not because I have everything figured out, rather because I’ve lived long enough to understand that the journey itself is part of the gift.
Perhaps that’s what this season of my life is teaching me. I don’t need to become someone entirely different to begin something new. I can bring the wisdom of my experiences, the strength of my relationships, the lessons of my teachers, and the love of my family into whatever comes next. I can honor the boy from the South Bronx, the performer who traveled the world, the husband and father who continues learning about love, and the martial artist who has spent a lifetime studying what it means to live with courage and character. All of those chapters belong to the same story, and that story is still being written.
The eagle is standing with its wings open. The wind is beginning to move. And I’m looking forward to discovering where it may carry me. We’re never too old, broken, bruised, or beat to continue growing stronger, and we’re never finished becoming.
Live Strong.
Peter Simon Liciaga
Living Strong Projects
A Personal Invitation
If our paths have crossed at some point in life, whether through martial arts, the performing arts, our community, friendship, or simply a meaningful conversation, I’d love to hear your story. How did we meet? What do you remember? Was there a moment, a conversation, or an experience that stayed with you? I’ve created a place on my website for us to share those memories because I believe the stories of our connections deserve to be remembered. Every life we touch becomes part of a larger story, and I’d be honored to hear how our stories have connected.
I’d love to hear your story.
