A Different Dream

Anyone who knew me well at all between 2009-2012 would know I had a really big dream back then. It was a dream that encompassed me on all sides. It filled me up and made me strong. It was all I ever thought about. It was all I ever wanted at the time. I worked for it day and night while still trying to hold down a normal life and work towards what people call a normal future. You know, college, career, etc…

My dream. 
TaeKwonDo. 
Martial Arts. 
Winning Nationals. 
Getting on the National Team. 
Aiming for the Olympics one day. 
What a dream that was!!

What a loss…. What an utter loss when it slipped through my grasp and ran like empty sand through my fingers and washed back away on the oceans of life.

And just like that it was gone. So many circumstances. So many problems. Some confusion. And it was snatched away from me right in front of my eyes, before I even had a chance to get very far. 

When I was training in TaeKwonDo, there was a long period of time when I was training fifteen hours a week at the studio and another ten at home. While working part-time and going to college full-time. Every second I had to give was given. I ran drills, I did my forms, I sparred everyone, including guys a foot taller than me. 

I taught classes, classes, and more classes. Weapons classes. Children’s classes. Self-defense classes. And everything in between.

I received my Blackbelt after three years of intense training. In a good Dojang that is about the shortest it should take you. But I was definitely putting in enough hours and I knew everything I needed to know from top to bottom and I could execute it beautifully. It was one of the best days of my life.

But Nationals. National Team. Olympics. 

It was not to last.

Part of it was the school I was at, and the Instructor I had at the time. While he could teach TaeKwonDo and Martial Arts really well, he was not very well educated on the current systems, standards, and way of sparring of the global TaeKwonDo world at the time. I could take anybody down in a regular sparring match. But the way they did the points and systems in the big league was a little different and I wasn’t doing well. I could beat guys a foot taller than me before, but these electronic chest guards and way of scoring simple points without power was confusing to me. 

And then some crazy things happened, and it was all gone anyway. I had to leave the Dojang, I had to leave the training. Some things forced me away from it, and I never went back. 

Even years later I never really went back and trained in a Dojang again. At least not regularly. I tried again once, but my schedule couldn’t seem to find any time anymore and my spirit was a little broken from some of those “crazy things” that had happened.

It was over. And I wondered why it all happened in the first place. There were very few things in my life that I have felt really strongly inside my spirit that I was meant to do. This was one of them. Even before I started, before I had developed any love for it at all, I knew it was something I was meant to do and that I needed to do. 

For those who have never had a dream like that taken from them, it may be a little hard to understand. It’s like a piece of your heart is ripped from you. For those who think I should have fought harder for it. Well… you don’t know the circumstances. Even those who were there saw only the tip of the iceberg. Believe me, I wanted to fight for it. I did fight for it. Over and over and over again. But the circumstances, the problems, the “crazy things”….. Eventually piled up too high and I was forced away.

I’ve thought long and hard about that dream. I still long for it sometimes. Sometimes I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling and think about it. It’s not that I’m still living in and yearning for the past. It’s just that a piece of my heart is living somewhere else and it can’t ever be retrieved again. Your soul feels that, and every once in a while you need to think about it. And remember. Not often. Just every once in a while.

A couple weeks ago I picked up my kicking targets again. But it wasn’t for me. It was for somebody else. About 30 other somebody else’s actually. 30 children in Nepal living in a shelter for abused children. It’s called Raksha Nepal. I was there visiting that shelter on a humanitarian group with a bunch of other people. They learned about my TaeKwonDo skills and my years of teaching TaeKwonDo and Self-Defense classes to women and children and they requested that I do the same with the kids in that shelter. Some of them had some previous training, but they wanted me to do some more with them.

I’ll admit…. When I picked up those targets again, I felt a deep pang of sadness pass through my heart and shiver down my soul. Every hit and kick on those targets seemed to echo, “You could’ve…. You could’ve…. You could’ve….” 

I’ve taught several self-defense classes over the years since my TaeKwonDo days. And I’ve taught several classes to the children in the shelter now. 

I looked, I watched, I wondered, I felt. 
I felt so much. Sadness, pain, wonder, loss.   

And then…. I understood. I understood why the Martial Arts was not just simply a basic interest or hobby of mine. I understood why I had to learn absolutely as much as I could in the few short years that I had it. I understood why I spent so many hours learning how to teach absolutely anybody how to do it. I understood why I faced the challenges I faced and why I had to learn the things I learned.

I understood. Where would I be without it? I wouldn’t have been able to offer that knowledge and teaching to my friends, to my relatives, or to all the kids and communities here in Nepal. 

It wasn’t a loss. It was a gain. It was always a gain. My dream was gone, but there were other dreams. Perhaps a dream to help others grow from it. Even if it was just in the very slightest bit. 

God works in mysterious ways. But one thing I’ve learned, He never takes you down a path without some purpose behind it. And often it's not the one that we thought, but a better one than we could have imagined. 

Tara Howard


Copyright November 2016