Written by One of the many requirements of this test is to write an essay about what a black belt means to me. I finished it a little while ago, and I thought that I would share it as one of my blog posts!
I have been doing karate for more than half of my life. Getting my black belt is a goal that I have been slowly working towards for years on end. The black belt seemed so far away and unattainable at times for a really long time. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I started realizing that testing for my black belt was something that I could actually do. Even though getting a black belt was always the long-term goal in karate, I honestly never would have thought that I could actually get to this point.
When I first started karate, it wasn’t because it was something that my parents were specifically looking for. It came into my life by coincidence. When I was about seven, I took a tumbling class at the Coloma Community Center. At the same time, Zen Martial Arts was also in Coloma, and every time I was at tumbling class, we heard a karate class nearby training. They were hard to ignore because you would constantly hear them making noise from across the hall. My dad decided to check it out, and we soon enrolled.
When I was younger, my training was mostly centered around just having fun. I would do some in-dojo tournaments and regular classes, but I would never go to big tournaments or really push myself that hard. I stayed at the dojo through Covid when we would have Zoom classes, then training in the park, then training in the outside back space of the dojo, and finally training back inside the actual dojo. Honestly, because all of that happened when I was much younger, I am surprised that I stuck with it, because kids are easily bored and constantly want to move on to the next activity. I moved up in the ranks through the core class, the core plus class, and then the adults class.
I have had many struggles over the years with my training in the dojo. The biggest thing that I have struggled with over the past four-ish years was feeling like I wasn’t good enough in this sport. I constantly compared myself to others and would get in my head when I didn’t think that I was at the same level as some of the other people my age, and it even made me want to quit at times. I have had many panic attacks during class when I would get in my head. Truthfully, only in the past year or so have I actually felt good about my training. It took me a really long time to get over the feeling that I wasn’t good enough in the dojo and to feel confident in what I am doing. I still struggle with it at times. I have accepted that even though I teach classes at the dojo and am a black belt candidate, I might not ever be the best student in the room, and that is okay. I have made peace with that, and it makes my training much more enjoyable because instead of comparing myself to others, I am just focused on training and improving myself.
In writing this essay, I was asked to answer one question. What does a black belt mean to me? I’ve given it a lot of thought, and to me, a black belt means that I have overcome all of the struggles and difficulties to get here. I made it through all of the self-doubt that I was good enough to even get to this point. I made it through all of the times that I didn’t want to go to class because I knew that it would be hard. I made it through all of the times that I wanted to quit because I didn’t think that I was able to do it. Looking back on my nine-plus years of training at Zen Martial Arts, I am so extremely happy that I never gave up on my training, because this dojo and karate genuinely changed my life. It has shaped me into the person that I am today. I essentially grew up in this dojo, and I have gone from an eight-year-old who was just doing this for fun to a seventeen-year-old who is finally testing for her black belt. I am extremely proud of myself for never giving up and pushing through all of the hard times, because it was worth it in every way.
