Tae Kwon Do in my Life (2011)

Tae Kwon Do in my Life

Presented Orally as Part of

First Dan Black Belt Certification

By Ivan Tarter, November 2011

      First, some background information. I began my journey in Korean martial arts when I was nine years old. My mother enrolled me in a Tae Kwon Do class and I joined about thirty kids my age, all starting together at white belt. Every December and June we tested, and by the time I was twelve I had earned my red belt. At that point I quit, mostly because I knew I wasn't very good and didn't feel like I was going to be able to pass the next couple tests.

      After I quit I didn't return to TKD for a long time. However, the four years I had invested into it, an hour and a half twice a week, continued to impact my life. I had learned that through pain comes reward, and physical conditioning is a discipline requiring perseverance and patience. I had learned that confidence breeds success, and if you doubt yourself you are exponentially more likely to fail. I had been inspired by the demonstrations of black belt breaks, fancy kicks and brutally fast sparring. Finally, I had found out that the asthma I'd been born with could be controlled and beaten if I stayed in shape. So I kept running every spring, and even found a couple opportunities to revisit the self-defense I'd learned as a child.

      I moved to Moore two summers ago. One day I happened to be driving on Sunnylane and was attracted to a giant sign advertising, for me, a return to that childhood challenge I had never overcome. Maybe I just wanted to feel again the pride of breaking inch-thick pine boards with my feet. I spoke with Master Wan and he convinced me to sign up. The first six months I trained with a young couple under Master An and relearned what I'd forgotten. It wasn't easy to lose my red belt, but I really did need the chance to start all over from scratch.

      As a high school teacher working with a mainly Hispanic population on the south side of Oklahoma City, I have been impacted by my TKD training in ways that specifically relate to my profession. How many times have I wanted to wring a student's neck, but didn't, because I had released all my frustration on the kicking bags the evening before? Probably several. It also gave me a physical confidence and courage so that even my larger students didn't intimidate me. As a young male teacher, there is always an element of competition with my male students, especially those who body build or who are enrolled in athletics. Thanks to my martial arts training, I'm not only a white-collar professional, but I'm also ready to spar in tournaments and defend myself, and that garners a lot of respect on the south side.

      There's more. Being a teacher is hard and many days I would come home dissatisfied with my professional performance or conduct. It was great to come to the gym through the week, to a place where I gave respect and got respect, a place of courtesy and cooperation, a place where I felt successful and could see visible progress from my effort. Even now, positive experiences like these are often lacking at my work place.

      Being a student here has made me a better teacher, too. Every evening at the gym I'm reminded that new skills must be practiced a thousand times, and that mistakes pave the road to mastery. As a student of TKD, I want to be told what I'm doing right, not just what I'm doing wrong. I want my instructors to tell me as many times as I need to hear it. I want them to be patient with me, and honest, too. I want them to inspire me with a love of the sport, so I can love it to. And if I want these things as a student here in the evening, then that's what I should be giving my students during the day.

      And of course, it's been great to stay healthy through the entire year. My immune system is stronger so I resist the majority of the bugs I'm exposed to by a large and often less-than-hygenic group of teenagers. It even helps me run Yago, my German Shepherd, as hard and as often as he needs exercise.

      I admit that after two and a half years it's been hard to come to terms with receiving a black belt – something I've anticipated nearly two decades. I always thought that by now I'd be an expert, that all my forms would be beautiful and all my kicks perfect. They're not, and I'm not. I've realized that old habits die hard and a black belt is really just another kind of white belt. I am still a student and will always be a student of TKD. I'm much humbler earning this First Dan than I was when I got my red belt.

      It's been great to foster new relationships here at the gym, and to be entrusted with responsibilities. Now I get to give something besides my money. I get to make the gym better. I'm excited about the coming months and the classes in Hapkido and Kumdo that will be offered in the new year. I'm excited to compete at an entirely new level at the upcoming tournaments.

      I'm also starting to study the more philosophical and spiritual elements of TKD. At the most basic level, it is a martial art – in other words, there is an aesthetic quality to the movements, whether sliding through the motions of a Taeguk form, or experiencing the back-and-forth, give-and-take, risk-and-reward of a good sparring match. It is truly beautiful and constitutes a kind of creative or artistic self-expression.

      Still, TKD remains a fundamentally Korean art form, and many cultural ideas and values are embedded into what may often appear as a neutral and even scientific sport. For example, the Asian idea of a person's energy – how you can channel the power of your entire body out to a single point, whether the edge of your hand, the heel of your hand, the side of your forearm – and exert an unbelievable amount of force from that single point, even if you're small and lacking the big brawny muscles that Western culture calls strength.

      Third, TKD exists because of the human need for violence. We see violence all around us every day, whether in a child's video game, the ongoing wars around the globe, or the angry threats honked during rushhour traffic. Martial arts are also fueled by this universal human quality, and explains the unparalleled satisfaction of executing a powerful and potentially lethal kick. Here, however, we learn to control our desire for violence and the emotions that can drive us to act impulsively. Violence becomes the conduit for discipline of mind and body, and in extreme cases, may be used defensively. Our natural impulses to destroy and hurt something put to constructive and positive use. And when those same violent desires inevitably arise in the real world, they have been so groomed and harnessed through years of sport that they are far less likely to control us.

      Finally, as a child when I stepped into that TKD gym, I was truly stepping into a new world. A world where you bow to show respect, where you count with strange words, where it's reasonable to do knuckle push-ups if your mind wandered for a few seconds. TKD is, for most practitioners in America, another way, and one that challenges our own assumptions and beliefs about how the world is supposed to work. For me, it makes me believe that the world can become a better place, and needs to be, and I can be part of making that happen, one kick at a time.

      Thank you.