The real highlights of my recent life are mostly taekwondo related. Within the past three weeks we had two INCTL tournaments, one hosted by our team at MIT, while the second one was hosted by Cornell University. The season has so far been be very challenging, since all teams are training to the best of their abilities and giving it their all in the ring. That’s what makes it exciting at the same time.

That being said, our team won the tournament we hosted, while Cornell University’s team won their own tournament. After both tournaments, however, the overall standings of the league favor MIT by 32 points (Cornell is second with 1011 cumulative points).

My personal contribution? Being there to spar heavy guys. Some of them slightly heavier than me, others… simply massive. One of the guys I lost to was so massive I thought I was sparring the Great Wall, except that it moved.

My two last matches at the Cornell tournament taught me two important lessons:

1) Trust your training, challenges that might have defeated you in the past are within reach now.
2) There are bigger challenges to face that you should keep training for.

I’m looking forward to keep training and improve my taekwondo overall. There is definitely something unique about taekwondo, and it’s not worth it to even attempt to describe the feeling.

Outside of taekwondo…

I keep learning and growing everyday from my interactions with my close friends, and even from interactions with not-so-close friends. I’ve realized how much I treasure the time I spend with the people closest to me, even if sometimes it seems too short.

I don’t think many people understand me or my feelings/thoughts, and sometimes I wish that this wasn’t the case since it could make some of my relationships much stronger and enriching. However, I wouldn’t want to turn a ‘casual’ friendship into an ‘awkward’ one by trying to explain myself or my feelings to someone that might not understand/appreciate them. I don’t blame anyone for not understanding me or being able to correspond to my feelings, for these things are natural and we can’t all think/feel the same way. Relationships in general are pretty irrational, and this uncertainty is what makes them so special. It’s all about finding that person that resonates with you.

I do have friends that understand me, and it makes me happy to have people like them around me. It’s nice to have people who don’t judge you based on trivial things and not-so-trivial things that you can’t change — I feel genuinely happy around them. I can’t complain about my life, because even if I miss some friends, and even if not all things can be like I’d like, I enjoy genuine and pure friendships with the people that surround me.

It hurts to think about how things could be, but it helps to see the good things of how things are.