What Karate Means To Me

I always wanted to fight. I usually fought my cousin in the lounge room. That always ended up with myself coming out complaining if he cheated, or hit me.

As the years went on, there were still aspects of self-defence and fighting in my life, whether that was, boxing with my friends, challenging dad, or simply just kicking my sister. Until finally a few years ago, dad introduced me to karate. Dad introduced me to karate because he thought I was uncontrollable, or in his words, a ratbag. Before karate, whenever I got wound up and aggravated, nothing could stop me from lashing out, and that’s where my karate journey started.

When I started, nothing made sense. The technique, the stances. It was a whole lot of mumble jumble that I couldn’t understand. Throughout my journey of learning, I have come to understand only the basics of karate. Karate to me means more than just fighting and self-defence. It means discipline and control. It means patience and mindfulness.

Karate has helped me in many ways through life, such as basketball, dance, school, and at home. It has helped me everywhere I go. Learning karate has made me physically, mentally, and spiritually better. It has improved my physical abilities from how to breathe, to how to get stronger, fitter and better balance within myself. Mentally, by how I react to what someone does, or how I react to the situation, and how focused and more cooperative I am in class. At home with what my parents tell me to do, whether that is chores, homework, or just going down to the shops. Spiritually, by finding passion in everything I undertake. By all of these things, I am calmer and healthier.

However, karate is also about self-defence. Even though I still have much to learn and explore, karate has definitely helped me defensive wise. I have prevented many fights, except one. Not to worry, I won. Just kidding. This was a minor fight, but karate taught me how to defend myself, and with that, I did not get badly injured.

I have also come to understand that in life, you can’t control everything that happens. Whether that is caused by people, school, drama, home, or just in general. People often go to sports to get their mind off things, and sometimes that doesn’t work. But with karate, no matter what the problem is, even if the problem is around you, or in your head, karate will ALWAYS focus your concentration and mind on karate, and nothing else but karate.

Achieving my black belt would mean, there is a responsibility that must be shown. A responsibility to teach, a responsibility to share my journey and my knowledge with other members, that hopefully one day, they could do the same. What will happen and what new knowledge will I get from achieving my black belt? I don’t know. If I stop what will I miss out on? I don’t know. If I keep going what more of a journey could I have? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.

Danielle Smith began training at karatedo on 3rd of November 2016, at age 9 years. He was graded to Shodan on 18th December, 2020, at age 13 years.