Tattoos

As many of your are now aware if you have looked at my vacation pictures on Facebook, I have a tattoo.  This is not a decision I made lightly.  I hear from so many people how they got their tattoos on a dare or because they were drunk or whatever.  To me, that is ridiculous!  It's a permanent mark on your body.  I generally feel the same way about piercings, even though they do fill in.

I've been asked about my tattoo by several people, what's it mean and why did I get it and so on.  I guess a visual aid would help just in case you have not seen it.

I got this:

And I got it here:

On my left shoulder.

The keen observer will notice that is it the same as the logo for the blog and also very similar to the painting I hung on my wall after painting it only without the Kanji characters on it.  I left out the characters because power is supposed to be on the top, but all the 'official' images I have found of a Triforce with writing, if I am reading the Kanji correctly power is not on the top, even on my painting (because I followed an 'official' image without checking what's what first. Silly me.  So to avoid a permanent mistake, I left out the characters (there are not characters on it in the Zelda games anyway.  I think it's just a way for Japanophiles to make the symbol seem more ancient and important or something, plus the artist that put it on me might have put "This guy is an idiot" in Japanese on my arm and I would have no idea! )

I symbolizes Wisdom, Courage and Power, and how without equal amounts of each one is without balance. And as I stated way back here, it's kind of the philosophy I took on leading up to my Black Belt.

Many people have said that they figured that I was not the type of guy to get a tattoo.  And for a very long time I would have agreed with those people.  Mainly because the main examples of people who I knew that had tattoos were my uncles and their tats are self inflicted monstrosities that are neither art nor representative of themselves in any way other than as a badge proclaiming their self-destructiveness.

I got the tat I got because I felt that I had earned it, and it was something that I was happy with living with for the rest of my life, it symbolizes my philosophy, and it's a philosophy that I spend a great deal of time putting into perspective.  It's a personal thing, which is why I did not brandish it about to everyone that wanted to see when I got it.

I have a friend that has a lot of tattoos.  She directed me to where I should go to get mine done.  I think her tattoos are amazing.  I got it done at Adrenaline in Toronto.  Frankly I think it was a wise decision to go to someone who has a lot of great, professional, original art tattoos for tattoo advice.  I was asked the other day about getting a tattoo and the only advise I had was:  'Get something that represents you".