Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

You know how there's a difference between reading about how to ride a bike and actually learning to ride one? That's what we're talking about here! There's "knowing that" (facts you can learn from books) and "knowing how" (stuff you need someone to show you).

Think about it like this: pretty much everything we know about physics is written down somewhere. But when it comes to something like tae kwon do? Most of that knowledge isn't in books - it's in the heads and muscles of the masters who teach it. If all those masters disappeared tomorrow, poof! A lot of that knowledge would vanish too.

Here's the funny thing - people will spend forever hunting down the perfect book but will work with any random mentor who comes along. That's kind of backwards when you think about it! While both book learning and hands-on learning matter, some things just can't be packed into a neat little PDF, you know?

Speaking of mentors, finding someone who can actually give good advice is like finding a parking spot in downtown on a busy weekend - pretty rare! The best mentors aren't just trying to show off how smart they are. Instead, they're like great tour guides - they know the territory AND they know you. They can look at your situation and see patterns that you might miss, just like how expert firefighters can look at a fire and predict where it's heading while rookies just see the flames.