Life isn’t like school. You get the test first, then figure out the lesson on your own. In some respects martial arts works this way. We think about the lesson being a new technique, a shiny new advanced form, or a concept that changes large parts of our material. But the lesson isn’t the new technique (no matter how cool the technique is). The lesson is you.
The curriculum is designed to teach certain applications. The techniques are designed to make you work on certain concepts, but the simple act of practicing helps you develop your connection to your body. Through practice of new techniques you learn how to make your body do more and different things. The better you get the more subtle a thing you can make your body do. The more things you can do at once. The technique is not the lesson, it contains the lesson. It is the finger pointing the way to the moon, if you look at the finger, you miss out on the moon (thank you Bruce). The technique is a guide, it points you in the right direction. But the goal isn’t the technique, it’s a path, not a destination. The goal is to get better at you.
The fun part about this is that the better you get at you, the more you find the art in things you do. It might be in the way you open a door, the way you walk, or move through a crowd, it might even show up in the way you dance. It isn’t that the martial art is implicitly in all these things. It’s that the martial art is in you. You put it in the things you do. Or, more accurately, it becomes a part of the things you do because it is a part of you.