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The Quest for the Black Belt

By Allie Alberigo

Many, many years ago there was a man who lived his life in a temple training in the Martial Arts.  At one point his teacher and all of the elders at the temple decided to send this man on a quest.  They gathered in a room and invited him there to tell him the news.  Upon being summoned, the student was both elated and fearful as he appeared before the elders.   The instructors were clear on the instructions and told the student that he must travel across the world to a temple in a far-off foreign land to complete the rest of his training.  They told him this would be the quest for knowledge and when he arrived at the far-away temple the teachers there would share with him all their secrets.

As you can imagine, this student was very excited.  He prepared and went on his way.  His travels were filled with many trials and tribulations; he battled many vagabonds, warriors, gypsies and street thugs along his way.  After almost one year on foot he finally arrived at the distant temple, tattered, weathered, but a different man.  He was greeted as a champion and was led directly into the chamber of elders.

He was instructed to sit while the rest of the elders gathered and came to the room.  Once everyone was in attendance he was handed a beautiful, leather-bound book with the title “The Book of Knowledge.”  The warrior took a deep breath, looked around, and smiled as he opened the book.  The book had only one page which was a mirror.  The warrior looked at it, and saw only himself.  He became frustrated and asked “Is this a joke?”  The elders said “You are the only one besides us who has made the journey and survived.  You are the living example; you can now take our place as the elder and run the temple so we can leave.”  The warrior was very frustrated and threw the book to the ground, breaking the mirror.  Loudly he said, “I am happy to be able to have lived the lessons, but I will not waste my time in this jail when so many things are still to be learned.”   He then got up and left.

This story is a fine example of the quest for Martial Arts training.  In the 21^st century, students are not as patient as they once were and they do not realize that lessons are not always as evident as they would like.  The lessons are in the time spent, the experiences, the failures, the losses, the successes, the bumps and bruises, the pain, the frustration, the confusion and the trust in their teachers.  They also lie in perception – whether a struggle, a confrontation or a situation is taken as a lesson or dismissed as something other then that.  Lessons are constantly presented to us, if we chose to learn.  In our modern society we are accustomed to finding information at the click of a keyboard and getting the information in a nano-second.  It is amazing that any of the actual physical skills are still around.  The road to success is paved in sweat, hard work and determination.  A very wise man once told me, “The only thing worth anything is something you worked hard for.”  If something comes easy it is not all that valuable.  Trust in your teacher, but work hard and live the lessons – train to live – live to train.  Be the example – live the Black Belt, don’t just tie it around your waste.