Why?

I found out that my dojo really did kick me out when I talked with Sensei today.

Why are they so mad at me? I didn’t mean to offend and harm anyone. Don’t they realize that? It seems like I’ve been a problem child in the dojo. I’m keeping getting into trouble. It seems like it one thing to the next. It seems like they don’t understand me or I understand them.

I started one thread when I haven’t even trained for a month and wasn’t even part of the dojo. I started the other when I was just starting to look in the dojo and been training for three months. How was I supposed to know that I couldn’t ask about him? I couldn’t have. I felt bad about that e-budo.com thread and deleted it. Isn’t that enough?

When I was having problems with the dojo, I would write it in my blog. I didn’t know what to do about all of these problems. The reason why I didn’t come up and ask my Sempai or Sensei is because I’m intimated by them. It feels like it’s “Do what you are told and don’t ask any questions.” When I say what I think about something or feeling I get into trouble. That is why I asked people on the internet because I felt that they were more approachable than my Sempai.

My Sempai say that they aren’t supposed to be my friends. How can I trust a person if he or she isn’t my friend? We should be friends to everyone inside and outside the dojo. My Sempai has said that the dojo is like a family and that my Sempai is like older siblings. In a family, older siblings are supposed to be friends with their younger siblings. They are not supposed to discipline them because that’s the parent’s job. If a sibling criticizes, puts them down, or belittles them, the parents will discipline him or her. Wouldn’t apologizing to Sensei be enough because he’s the parent and the one who runs the dojo?

If my Sempai are my brothers and sisters, wouldn’t we be equal to each other? Of course, they have been in karate a lot longer than me; however, we should be still equals. From what I’m seeing is that we are not equals in the dojo. For example, my Sempai can speak any time at Sensei’s house and I can’t.

In addition, parents are supposed to be friends with their children. However when they mess up, they need to discipline and love them at the same time. This is what President Faust said on the lds.org website.

“One of the most difficult parental challenges is to appropriately discipline children. Child rearing is so individualistic. Every child is different and unique. What works with one may not work with another. I do not know who is wise enough to say what discipline is too harsh or what is too lenient except the parents of the children themselves, who love them most. It is a matter of prayerful discernment for the parents. Certainly the overarching and undergirding principle is that the discipline of children must be motivated more by love than by punishment. Brigham Young (1801–77) counseled, “If you are ever called upon to chasten a person, never chasten beyond the balm you have within you to bind up.”

Discipline with severity, discipline with cruelty, inevitably leads not to correction, but rather to resentment and bitterness. It cures nothing. It only aggravates the problem. It is self-defeating.

Teach your children to love you rather than to fear you.”

I’m getting the vibe that Sensei wants us to fear him. I even heard from other Sempai that Sensei would hit people with a stick if they made a mistake. My Sempai has said that they are just to tear the lower students down, what’s the point in that? Wouldn’t it be easier to keep on building students up and up? When they break a rule, a parent can tear them down by disciplining them and then build them up again with love, not fear.

This is what Layne E. and Jana Squires Flake said the lds.org website,

“In order for any organization to run effectively, it must establish a set of bylaws. A family also needs bylaws to prescribe boundaries for behavior. If parents do not have a specific, deliberate plan for discipline, they are likely to rely simply on instinct and react emotionally to each situation.

At our weekly family council, we mutually agree upon rules which all must abide by. We also establish consequences for disobedience. In this way, everyone is aware of the rules and the consequences; there are no surprises. And the consequences are predictable and consistent.

An orderly home depends upon well-defined and well-understood rules.”