My Journey
Taekwondo Essay on the martial arts journey by Rishi Sundaresan
Everyone has a goal in his/her life, and they have a process to achieve it. The process can take days, weeks, months, years, or decades. If one wants to do well on a test in a few days, the process will take a few days. Martin Luther King’s Goal of African Americans having equal rights as Whites took years to accomplish. Overseas, Mahatma Gandhi’s goal of India being free from the British took about a decade to achieve. My goal in Taekwondo was to achieve a black belt, and the process did begin when I was a White belt, but I will narrate the process from Senior Red belt since that the 2 months prior to testing for a Black belt was the most exciting and challenging part of the process.
As a Red belt, when I was testing for a Senior Red belt, I saw a myriad of students no-changed testing for Black belt. From that point, I knew that the next testing for me wouldn’t be easy. For the first month, I went to classes and learned how to master Fire Form and sparring. I did practice at home, but not that much. After my interview, I went to 14 classes prior to testing. I worked hard in class and at home, working on my form, board-breaking, sparring, and flexibility. One challenge I faced was that my stances didn’t look good and were too short. I worked hard and effectively on that to fix it. I went to two private classes instead of only one. Finally, it was time to test.
Even though I got a no-change in primary testing because my belt wasn’t tied right, I still worked over the weekend on my forms and board breaking. It took me about 2 minutes to find out that my belt was on the right way except for one part. I did pass secondary testing, and so my goal was achieved. I learned from this experience that one can achieve any goal if he/she works hard enough.
