“Don’t play patty cake with that girl!” I heard Master Holloway shout during the sparring rounds of one of our exams a while back. He was referring to a teen girl who was testing for her black belt, and he wanted us to make sure we were making her work for it.
I got what he was saying. I had some of the responsibility in making sure I helped her earn it. Why? Because when you train for years and manage the discipline and dedication it takes to get to the point of testing for your black belt, you don’t want it to be easy. At the end of that test you want to know you earned it, without any tiny shred of doubt. You do not want to walk away from that test wondering if you have what it takes or wondering if you really earned it.
That night was six months after I earned my own black belt, which meant that I was now part of the team of people who had to make sure she earned hers. I knew what I was supposed to do. I knew that part of my job was to spar hard with her, to make her work for the belt, to help her know, without a doubt, what she was made of. That is an incredibly hard job. These guys and gals are your friends. You train with them weekly, get to know them, become friends, care about them. The last thing you really want to do is fight hard when you know they are literally on their last legs. When you know they are beyond exhausted, wondering if they will be able to do one more round. When they are panting, red in the face, hands on their knees, trying to catch their breath in the half a second they have to recover from the last round. You have been there. You feel their pain. But you have to fight hard. You have to get that you aren’t doing them any favors by going easy or pulling back. You have to help them try to find that place inside of themselves that can do it.
So when you train and test with a group of people, your school, your family, it is the whole group that earns those belts. We do it as a team. The individual has prepared, studied, trained and shows up with their indomitable spirit, and is then held up by the energy and spirit of the group. You may have given them one of their bruises but you also gave them a sense of confidence and self esteem, of pride and belonging, that is unparalleled. This is an amazing feeling. Your family makes sure you leave with a sense of accomplishment that will be hard to top, maybe for the rest of your life.
I earned my second degree black belt yesterday. My family held me up. They wouldn’t let me fail. There was no option for being less than awesome. Two of my classmates earned their first degree black belts. I have no doubt they know they earned their belt. And that makes me smile. If some of our classmates are having reservations about fighting too hard, or thinking they should have cut us some slack and played patty cake, you can let that go right now. You helped us know we earned it. We would be disappointed if you hadn’t.
I know some people think that my colleagues and I train in a school where the tests are too hard, and too long. I say that if you want to play patty cake, then maybe you should take up tennis. If you love Tae Kwon Do like I do, and it is time to tell your friends and family about that last test and the new belt you have around your waist, you want something real to brag about. You want to know you earned it. And we do.
