Karate is seen around the world as a way to get good at fighting and only at fighting, but karate is much more than something that small. Karate is all about continuous learning in which one may learn how to protect him or herself, but also how to get through life happily. Karate is a means to keep you calm, even in the face of the worst possible situation. Karate is a means to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Karate means the world to me because karate is the one thing that saves me and continues to save me when I need it most.
Karate is a way to stay calm in the worst possible scenarios. I am a Sikh and wear a turban in public and though we live in the 21st century, I’m still targeted for this “different look.” When I am targeted, I hear insults about my friends, family and self. If I didn’t have karate, I would have snapped a long time ago because of all the anger that gets stored inside, but karate is the only means I have for releasing it. Karate helps me to express my anger in a positive form and, thus, it helps me get through life. Another similar incident that karate helps me with is all the stress and anger that comes with being in high school. In life, there is a lot of stress because of the increased workload where I go and so I need some way to stay focused and relaxed before I do work. Karate gives me an outlet to release my stress and allows me to become relaxed and focused. Karate is the only effective method I found to express myself so that I am able to stay calm in the face of the worst scenarios.
In addition to calming myself down through karate, karate helped me to keep those who are not able to protect themselves safe. As explained earlier, my turban makes me a target. When people find a target, they look for any possible way of hurting that person and that includes getting to me through my friends. When I’m targeted, so is everyone I care about and a lot of my friends can’t protect themselves. Karate taught me to have enough confidence that if my friends were even targeted, I could protect them. This doesn’t mean I have to fight everyone, but, rather, I have the confidence to stand up for myself and others because karate has already put me in situations much more uncomfortable than situations I face in everyday life. In addition to protecting my friends, there are other people who need help everyday. A few weeks ago, I saw a grade 9 boy getting bullied by many grade 10 boys who thought they were gangsters. They were pushing the boy around and calling him names, but my karate helped me to calmly walk up and stop them. I didn’t have to fight anyone because I was able to talk to them calmly. Karate helped me talk before raising my fists and to protect the grade 9 boy. Karate taught me that if someone around me is in trouble, I have the power to help them and that is why karate is important to me.
Finally, karate means the world to me. Since a young age, I have been through a lot. Lots of scenarios that made me hate waking up in the morning and regret everything I did in the past, which is a terrible way to live. Luckily, I have karate to help. Every time I was feeling down, I went to karate and it allowed me to forget my problems, even if it was only for the time I was training. It allowed me a change of view for hours at a time and ultimately saved me from regretting my life and being sad all the time. Although my way of living has changed for the better due to karate in the ways described previously, it also changed my life because of all the friends I’ve made throughout my training. Some of my closest friends were made through my training. Though I haven’t known them for as long as some of my school friends, the fact is that all my karate friends share a common goal with me and that goal is black belt. This is why I can click well with all of them and they’re not just friends, but a second family to me. Karate means the world to me and allowed me to progress in my life. That is how it saved me.
Karate is my savior and continues to be my savior to this day. It allowed me to get through life calmly facing all my problems with an unprecedented level of confidence by giving me an outlet to release all my stress and anger. Karate allowed me to protect my friends from any problems they had, as well as the problems of those around me whether they were related to me or not. Finally, karate helped me get up when I was at the lowest point in my life by giving me a second family to lean on and pick me up when I was down. Karate is something I’m good at and it helps me get through life happily. This is why karate is something I can’t live without.
