“The goal is important, but the journey more so”
During warm ups, Master Landry put the above saying up on the board. I’ve often come back to that saying since that day. Why do so many people think that learning karate is a journey? I’ve certainly had plenty of comments from people expressing success for my journey. Since I’ve never really thought about learning karate as a journey, I’ve tried to come up with other sports that are considered a journey. Maybe learning any sport is a journey, but I don’t think so. For instance, you don’t tell a young man learning football that the journey is rough, but well worth it. You’re likely to get a blank stare back.
If it’s not about the journey for other sports, then it must be about the goal, and in some sports it’s literally about the goal. What’s the common goal in most sports? Well, to put it simply, to win. Coaches tell kids that winning is not important that it’s the sportsmanship of the game, but we all know that when a team is winning the coaches sing praises. I think the major difference with karate is that it is a deeply personal sport. Sure, when we all do the forms together, it looks really cool; that is if we all do it correctly. But each of us has their own personal weaknesses and strengths that we discover as we are learning karate.
So, how has my journey been so far?
Let’s start with the easy stuff. I started karate to basically get healthier. To date, I’ve lost 25 pounds and can actually feel muscles in my arm! I definitely have more energy and find myself being more light-hearted about my physical self.
Now for the harder lessons…
Sparring, sigh. I don’t know what it is exactly about sparring that makes it so difficult for me. I can and have done a presentation in front of a room full of Executives without a flutter of butterflies, but as soon as they say to go get your sparring gear on, my stomach starts to churn. The good news is that I’m able to keep the giggling down to a minimum. But rather than give up I’ve decided to tackle sparring like I do anything else that I’m not very good at. I study it. I’ve been watching others while they are sparring, I’ve tried to find books (to no avail unfortunately), and to come up with one thing that I’m going to work on the next time I step into the sparring ring.
Additionally, I’ve always thought of myself as being younger. Let’s just say that in my mind I’m really about 27. Within the first month of learning karate, I injured my knee pretty badly, but was sure that it would heal quickly. It didn’t, but I refused to give up the karate. So, I didn’t tell anyone how bad it really was, and was able to convince myself that exercising my knee in karate was helping it to heal. Since it didn’t hurt during karate, it made sense to me. Really, it only hurt when I sat for long periods (like 15 minutes), and of course was worse the day after karate lessons. After about 3 months of dealing with the pain, I finally went to the doctor.
The diagnosis was reasonable. I have a tear in the medial meniscus of my knee which is fine as long as I can maintain my lifestyle without limitations; otherwise I’ll need surgery to fix it (to read up on the injury, I found this site very helpful, http://www.steadman-hawkins.com/meniscus/overview.asp). But, it’s not the diagnosis that made my jaw drop during that visit. It was what the doctor said next that got me. It went something like this, “This is a common injury for middle-aged people like you and I where your body is not as flexible as it used to be.” When did I become middle-aged? Ok, I admit I’m not 27, but really, middle-aged? Come on.
There were several things that I could have done with this news. The first being to quit karate, but I decided that I’m not quite done with it yet. Not because of my belt level, but there’s this almost spiritual thing about achieving personal satisfaction from knowing that you improved even just a little bit like not bobbing up and down while doing that last form. No one else may notice it, but you know that you achieve a small step along the journey. I guess when I feel that I’ve learned all that I can, then I’ve reached my goal and my journey has come to an end. Until then, I’ll just take it one challenge at a time.
- Wendy Austin
If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.
