Here’s a story that’s stuck with me over the years from George Leonard, who ended his (excellent) book “Mastery” with it:
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“When Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, was quite old and close to death, the story goes, he called his students around him and told them he wanted to be buried in his white belt. What a touching story, how humble of the world’s highest-ranking judoist in his last days to ask for the emblem of a beginner!
But Kano’s request, I eventually realized, was less humility than realism. At the moment of death, the ultimate transformation, we are all white belts. And if death makes beginners of us, so does life – again and again. In the master’s secret mirror, even at the moment of highest renown and accomplishment, there is an image of the newest student in class, eager for knowledge, wiling to play the fool.
And for all who walk the path of mastery, however far that journey has progressed, Kano’s request becomes a lingering question, an ever-new challenge:
Are you willing to wear your white belt?”
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The challenge we all face is that our egos are trying to keep us from learning new things …
But if the founder of judo is willing to acknowledge he has a lot to learn, maybe we all should?
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