I wasn’t myself for some time and others were beginning to see it in the dojo.
I first suspected it when some of the senior students of the dojo began training more with me when the class partnered up to practice the various forms.
It was both a signal that the dojo, the teacher noticed something was up, but also a chance on my own terms to speak to them about it, which would get passed up to the teacher.
I was silent on it.
After class, when we would go out to the coffee shop, restaurant or pizza shop to hang out, the most senior student of the dojo would sit around me more in-case I wanted to talk about it.
I continued to ignore it.
When the teacher was finally forced to speak to me directly, that was when I had to share my feelings.
I was upset with former student.
A mixture of disappointment, surprise, and hurt feelings.
What about him, asked the teacher.
I told him that he was the fist student that had entered the dojo as a white belt, and who I had helped take to a senior student level. All of the time both inside and outside of class assisting, sharing, being honest with the movement.
Years.
For what?
Them just to leave?
I knew what my teacher was going to say, that everybody who enters the dojo he hopes will stay and train at the dojo forever, and in a few cases that has happened as they are still here, but that aside a teacher still pours everything into the student even if they leave so they will always have something to pull them ahead in life.
The time and effort aren’t wasted, it is transformed.
I disagreed as this student, who was also my friend, was the first to get to that point and not step through the martial gate.
It had never happened in the dojo before.
A student to go all the way, to the point of being recommended for the testing at the Gathering, only to just leave.
Not as in leave the dojo and go join another dojo, but as in leave budo altogether.
Who walks away from fifteen years like that?
They said it was about work, a new job, a new opportunity which wasn’t true.
They still could have continued training.
I didn’t tell my teacher I knew this, but I did, that when one became a certain rank and position in the dojo, that he prepared a doomsday package for you.
The package was a copy of all your menjo, a written timeline of your training, membership cards and a letter of recommendation from him.
If something happened to the teacher, or if a student left for another martial arts dojo, for whatever reasons, they would be given this package.
A kind o passport that would make sure that wherever the student landed, they could continue training with any introductions and the least friction possible in a new dojo.
The teacher was important, but the student continuing training, continuing the martial path somewhere was more important.
I knew, because I saw it, the student we were talking about, his doomsday package was still in the drawer in the office.
Which means he just left.
I replied that work was an acceptable excuse for leaving in our society, something that would not be questioned, something that would not invite follow-up questions.
Not that I was owed that, but our teacher was.
Seeing I was visibly upset at my friend leaving, my teacher did something rare and just straight up told me.
It is one thing to get a black belt and pass through the martial gate maybe 1 in 100 does this, assuming they make it past the first year in the dojo.
But how many pass through the next gate?
I paused when he asked, because I just assumed that if you made it to that point everybody did, as it was a natural next step.
Continuing my teacher pointed out that my experience here was not reflective of the larger picture, the dojo had been very lucky with its students, I had been *very* lucky in the students before me.
There are many like my friend who on reaching the next gate they can’t step through, they have gone as far as they could in this life.
This life.
And that is not a failure in any way, but just where they are, and that needs to be respected.
Your friend didn’t fail. He simply reached the limit of his current life.
But who walks out on 15 years?
I was hearing my teacher but I wasn’t listening.
I asked if we could leave his name up on the nafudakake a bit longer, maybe a few more months to which my teacher agreed if I thought that would help me.
But he was honest with me, he wasn’t coming back.
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