Failure to Learn

Sounds negative, right? Like "My failure to learn resulted in multiple parking tickets," or something.

I'm no sure that I have ever cared about being successful more than in the martial arts. We always want to succeed and through successes honor our teachers. I'm the kind of guy that puts lots of pressure on myself when thinking about all of the effort my teachers have put into me. That said, it would be easy to assume that failure in the martial art of Farang Hapkido would be crushing, but those who make that assumption are wrong and so was I in the beginning.

I have played music in front of hundreds. I wrestled in front of a thousand spectators. For 19 years I have stood at the front of a high school classroom multiple times a day. I've even been the officiant at three weddings. I am renown as the worst speller I know, which is a tough row to hoe as an English teacher. But nothing was more frightening than attempting my first "head high" round house kick, mostly because of the result. Falling flat on my side/back, I did more damage to my pride than I ever did to my "opponent" in the mirror.

I had been attending classes for under a week, so I was still very much the new guy, and as such I had some extra helpful eyes on me. Maybe it was athletic related amnesia, but I thought I was pretty coordinated. After all, I had wrestled for just over six years, played youth and intramural sports, coached high school athletes, and ran...occasionally.  Although there were 20-something other students in that class, not one laughed, giggled, or even cracked a smile when I went down hard. A couple glanced over to make sure they wouldn't step on me, and I got a "You good?" from a third. My face was beet red from embarrassment, but I think most students took it as a sign of fatigue since we were all sweating through the warm up that class. My failure seemed so colossal compared to hitting a clinking wrong note during a show or misspeaking during a lesson in a literature class. Likely because this was such a pure endeavor in comparison.

Since that day, I have failed more times than I have succeeded in accomplishing a new technique or owning series of movements, but not once has an instructor asked me why I wasn't being succeeding yet. Over the years my teachers and training partners have offered the kind of encouragement that can come only from those who are still learning, and those who are still learning are still making attempts and failing. At work, in relationships, and in every other part of our lives as martial artists, we should be failing as a result of being learners. Those who expect others to never fail them may never have been truly tested or have forgotten what it is to be hungry for new knowledge and new experiences and to fail in the pursuit of a skill or technique. If you fail on the path of learning, you have taken one more step toward attaining the goal.