“Wherever there is change, and wherever there is uncertainty, there is opportunity”
It has been a strange and difficult year so far for everyone, as we all try to come to terms with the changes we’ve faced personally and as a society due to Coronovirus. There’s no denying the effects will be long lasting and the future is uncertain, but with uncertainty, comes opportunity.
Like many others, I had to close the doors on our Taekwondo club for the forseeable future and suddenly put the brakes on all our plans, just at a time when we were beginning to really thrive. I worried that everything we had built over the last 10 years may be ruined, worried that when this was over would we still have the members that made us a club or would we have to start again.
What I learned, was that I had nothing to worry about at all, because over the last 10 years we had built more than just a club, we had built a community. We had created a place that people came to enjoy martial arts and sport, a place where new friendships were made and grown, a place where people had fun and enjoyed learning something new.
Our club wasn’t simply defined by four walls and a roof, our club was defined by the people; the students, the parents, the children, the adults, the instructors. Our club was a community that extended beyond a training hall.
We embraced Zoom to train online together from our homes, we embraced outdoor training sessions to train in small groups. We kept our Taekwondo Tuesdays going, we kept some of our routine, we kept active, we kept working together, we kept looking for opportunities. No one is sure what the future holds but I’d like to think we will keep some of the new ways of training together, even when we are back in our gyms.
What has struck me through the whole pandemic is how resilient people are, how adaptable we are and how we are able to find positivity in the most negative of situations; how we are able to turn adversity into opportunity.
