I had a dream. I wanted to be just like my teacher. He was amazing. No, you don’t understand — there was a confidence about him — a strength, a power. When he moved the mountains moved. When he flowed it was the river flowing. I knew, I could see it. It was not like normal people.

One day I had to go away because I was young and I didn’t have any money. It was sudden. I wasn’t in control of my life. But I vowed to honor him, to never forget his teaching, and to remember him and one day to return and show that I was a good student. That I was worthy of being his student.

Decades passed and although I occasionally tried to look him up I was never able to find him again. From what I had heard he went to China to continue his training — not that I felt he needed to, but surely because out of everyone I have ever seen he was ready for it, he was capable of scraping together what little there was left for him to learn and reaching a new level. But over those decades the fact is I was never able to find him again, anywhere. There were whispers, here and there, but he was gone.

I tried to understand. This guy was good. He was better than most head instructors I’d met. But he had either failed, quit, given up or been forced into different waters. I couldn’t help but eventually make the connection between him and I, not in that I have any kind of skill, but that in the end life did damage to our dreams. It didn’t make sense that he wasn’t in the spotlight these days. That is who he was. If he wasn’t out there, it couldn’t have been his choice.

About midpoint, 15 years after I had met him (and a good 15 years ago) I ran into the former president of the New York Go Club. He and I became fast friends and he was a very wise man so he told me the real history of the club and he told me about the dreams, and the reality, of professional weiqi play in America. What he said struck a bell — it was all so similar to martial arts, to my experience and to the sad fate of so many others.

The old man teaching in the school gym. Clearly a master. So old, so unknown. When I looked twice, he was gone. Forced out financially, maybe, too old, maybe dead.

The school on augusta. So well known, so respected. But they’re just not there anymore. Finances. Maybe they are somewhere else, I don’t know.

You know what Mr. Go Club told me? He told me that it was dangerous to get stronger. Many people try and they end up destroying their life.

So I figured, what I had to do was fix my life first. First I needed money. A lot of money. I figured that out early on. What business do the poor have to learn martial arts? This is a truth not for us, but for them. Because you are not in control of your life.

This is the most important lesson I’ve learned. If you are serious about martial arts, stop training and go fix your life first. Otherwise it will only ever be a hobby for you. Then again, maybe that’s all you want. But if you want more, now you need to fix it as fast as possible. It takes a long time to align yourself to this. Personally I feel it was worth it. If I knew this lesson earlier I would have been able to start much younger. But I was always so poor and under-educated about money. I will make sure to teach these lessons to my students in the future, it is so important, not just how to throw punches and kicks!