Complete exhaustion... these are the two words that come to mind to describe the feeling of when you've fought up to the point where you feel like you are going to pass out or die from the sheer fatigue. It is as if everything around you starts to fade and become an insubstantial blur of sights and sounds. You feel your heart beating so fiercely that you think for a second you might have a cardiac arrest. Your arms don't work right anymore, your legs are wobbly and your foundation is nearly gone. You can barely stand up, let alone walk or hit with any strength at all. You have to keep going even though your attempts at movement are weak and rather pathetic. You are sluggish, you feel heavier than ever, you are slow... very slow. Sweat is pouring from your face. You're hot and your uniform has been pulled away from the belt and is sloppily hanging open. Another person comes at you with full-throttle kicks and punches and you desperately try to fight them back though you get knocked backward or knocked to the floor. Perhaps you just get grabbed, yanked around and fed a couple of heavy thumping knees to the stomach and chest. You notice the blood slowly dripping from your nose from the punch that came in a few black belts before. This means almost nothing, however, because the only thing that you can think about is how utterly miserable and completely exhausted you're feeling on the inside. All you can think about is how badly you'd just love to stop and lay down or just walk away from it all! All the while you hear a loud, deep and angry voice in the background yelling out two words directly at you, "Don't... quit!"
Those were the words of my first official martial arts instructor who was 3rd generation down from the Founding Father of American Kenpo himself, Ed Parker. It was Ed who brought Kenpo from China to the States. Vance McNeil Learned from Ed and taught John Wadlin who was my instructor. Vance used to say, "I don't teach 'karate', I teach you how to fight." This school was quite rough-and-tumble and the belt tests were not easy to get through. But, looking back, I truly appreciate the honor of having experienced those years.
The thing that I really want to get across here is that of all that we went through and as much sweat and blood that I lost there, one thing stood out to me more than the others and I still think about it all the time. The fact that the instructor, incidentally named instructor of the year and a national champion, would yell a simple, "Don't quit!" during the advanced belt tests. He used to say, "If you are up for testing then that means that you are ready." That the only thing he would really fail you for was quitting itself. These tests were broken into two day tests and were about 5 hours long on day one and 4 hours on day two. Some part of you would want to quit and, yet, somehow you'd find the fortitude to keep going however sloppy your technique might be. There is a very good reason he taught this way. On the street it can mean utter survival. But, in life, it means much more... it means succeeding. An old mentor of mine used to say, "When you've reached the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!" He knew that once you quit, that usually meant there was no coming back. Quitting or persevering in the midst of hardship will make the difference between living a life of victory or defeat. Things don't always work out how we'd like them to; and, certainly, there are times when we have to improvise and re-evaluate. Things will sometimes go wrong. We have to always be on the lookout for solutions and we have to work hard, point blank. In the end, though, it always pays off, one way or the other. Usually the victory is even sweeter when we know that we've given it our all. Something that we've worked terribly hard for always has much greater value to us. But, above all, if you don't have anything else, if you don't have anything else you can hang on to... remember these words: "Don't quit!"
