Black belt essay by Sophia DePietro
What does it mean to be a black belt? That’s a hard question to ask someone who has never hadexperience with being a black belt but I do have experience with peers of mine being black belts so I cantry to explain. Being a black belt to me, means that you were just a white belt that never quit. You are awhite belt that had the confidence, courage, dedication, heart, bravery, and hard-working skill of a blackbelt. Being a black belt isn’t some award you get for coming to karate classes, it’s way more than that.You have to earn it. Being a black belt and having one is a privilege not a prize. When I talk to peopleabout karate, they think it’s some easy sport that anyone could do, they tend to just ignore the fact thatthere are much more things then just kicking and punching just like any other sport. A black belt is asymbol of years of sparring, techniques, katas, training, boxing, and hard work. Being a black belt wasmy dream ever since I started but I didn’t want to put any effort into it. As I started to grow more andbecome higher belt, I realized that if I wanted to be honored as a sensei, I had to put all of my effort intothis and do better than I did the last time. Being a black belt means working hard but it also means haverespect. You should have respect for yourself, other students, sensei’s, grandmasters and even peopleoutside of karate. What I mean by having respect for yourself is you must believe in yourself, not on justcomparing yourself but believe that you can accomplish anything you want if you work hard for it suchas a black belt. You also must be compassionate about this sport. You can’t just learn and forget a technique. You have to learn, work on it, perform it, find little details that you might be doing wrong, fixthem, and perform it again. When you do forms you have to be serious about it not just do the moves,you have to do the correct stances, do the correct moves, you have to be strong, and you have to havepower. Another thing you need to have is practice. Like I said before you can’t just do it once and thenforget about it. You must keep practicing and ask questions if you don’t understand or can’t do a moveright. It’s better to ask questions then not and do a bad technique or kata. Trust me I’ve made thatmistake before. When I was part of the lowers belt from being a white belt to a brown belt, I didn’treally care about remembering things that much. I thought as long as I knew them at the moment, Iwould be okay. But as I started to be expected of more, I was getting more and more embarrassedabout how little I knew. But I’m glad that I had the learning experience because after that I made theright choice, I went to one of my sensei’s and asked for a booklet about everything I needed to knowfrom katas to technique to what kicks and punching I should know. Now I’m a proud red belt with tonsof experience with everything. One last thing is that you should be humble. You must be humble aboutwinning or losing. No body wants to be considered a sore loser or to cocky when it comes to winning.But you also don’t want to be to down on yourself. Everyone probably knows a lot more than they thinkand having the confidence in yourself about knowing a lot is good. But you also don’t want to have tomuch where it’s being rude to others and making them feel they’re not good enough.
