Many Lessons
“Oh Wow!!! How did I get into this mess?” The Brown Belt was at a rival dojo. His friend and dojo mate, a young 1st degree black belt, or Shodan, was seated formally in the middle of the dojo floor. The Senseis at this dojo were brothers in their late 20’s. They were relatively new to town, their dojo opening just 7 months earlier.
Before opening their dojo, the brothers had visited all the other dojos in town. They had presumably made positive connections with the martial art community and had been welcomed by all. Evidently, while making their dojo visits, one of them had said that they didn’t feel there was anyone in town who had anything to teach them. That statement said more about them than it did the state of the arts in town, but that is a different story.
The Shodan heard what the brothers had said and took it as a vile insult to our dojo and our Sensei. He was there to confront the brothers and restore his dojo’s honor.
The Brown Belt knew he should have been a voice of reason and opposed this action an hour earlier. It all seemed a bit unreal to him and he had to admit to a bit of curiosity about how this would play out. Now it was staring him in the face. Was this going to be a dojo war like in the movies? He hoped not, but he found himself evaluating the threats posed by the 2 brothers and their group of 8 students.
The Shodan made his challenge speech to the brothers. After a moment of thought and whispered discussion, the older brother apologized for any perceived insult to our Sensei and showed no inclination to get physical. He listened to the Shodan and gave rational answers. Finally, the confrontation was over and they left the rival dojo.
Meantime, Sensei had heard what was going on. The brothers had Sensei’s phone number and had called to make sure he knew what had happened and to assure Sensei that they meant no offense. Sensei thanked them for the call and apologized for the Shodan’s unauthorized and impulsive actions.
Sensei was not happy. The Shodan had done all this without even bouncing the idea off Sensei. He just took it upon himself to avenge a perceived wrong.
The next evening, there was a big tournament. Sensei and the Shodan were there as where the brothers. Sensei asked the brothers to join him and the Shodan back behind the bleachers. Sensei made the Shodan sit formally in front of the brothers and apologize. It was very humbling.
The Shodan had one more lesson to learn. The rest of the night at the tournament, he moped around feeling like he had let his Sensei and himself down. He felt worthless and was letting it show. Sensei got to have another conversation with him and the Brown Belt, because it was a lesson we all need. He told them to not let one mistake cause them to make more mistakes. When you make a mistake, acknowledge it, learn from it, then let it go and get on with this training we call “life”.
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