I was lucky this morning, as I had a chance to attend an early morning class for the first time in months¹ and reconnect with longtime friends. We were talking about the “good old days,” when the classes were smaller and more intimate. Instead of 50 in a class, it was 20, and half the class were black belts. (We were blue belts at the time.)

I said, “I remember being scared. There were all those brown and black belts that beat us up. And now look, the class is huge, and I’m afraid of all these blue belts.”

We laughed. But we agreed. Most lower belts are more dangerous than black belts. I wonder if those old black belts were afraid of us.²