Guidance from the Highly Respected Teacher

In my second year of practicing Kendo, I was fortunate enough to attend a class with one of the greatest Kendo teachers in China.

After class, he very enthusiastically invited us to compete with him, and I was very excited to join the registration team. Although he was already an old man of 70 or 80 years old, he was still very standard and agile in every movement, which I could hardly resist.

Although I tried my best to deal with his every move, I was eventually defeated by him.

After the competition, he patted me on the shoulder and said approvingly: "Good job, boy! Even though you didn't win, I saw your spirit of wanting to win and that's good. Don't worry too much about winning or losing, because sometimes your competitors may be very good and you may not be able to beat them, what you have to do is to believe in yourself and try to beat them even though it may be hard to win. Practice more and keep the spirit of hard work and I am sure you will become a successful kendoist!"

His words inspired me and from then on I focused on whether I won the match or not, but on whether I did my best in the match and what new knowledge I learned from my opponent. For me, no matter how strong the opponent is, they always have skills worth learning. At the same time, I respect every opponent I meet, because every match is a valuable lesson for me and every opponent is a teacher who can give me new insights.