It's Always Too Soon to Quit

Once a simple mantra of my karate class with Grandmaster Castanza, it has slowly and inextricably become a part of my everyday life.  This however didn’t start in the dojo, it began as part of my upbringing.

 My Dad, having grown up during the great depression had learned, as so many people at that time had, that nothing should be taken for granted; Make everything you have count and make it last as long as you can. Never give up on something because it was too hard or might require too much work, you didn’t have that luxury.  



During the Great Depression of the 1930's Families were
were forced into lives of meager livings and were often
forced to be separated in order to find work.



 During the depression, the US was fully buried under its blanket of isolationism, which eventually got torn from our grasp as we were thrust into WW2 and along with that came rationing as our natural resources were collected by the government for the war effort. Our men and boys shipped overseas to either the European or Asian theater to fight an enemy as they fought off the cobwebs of the last 2 decades.  However, the servicemen at that time, knew that there was only one way to return – In victory. As the George Cohan song said, “…And we won't come back till it's over, over there”.  (Though this song was written for the previous generation fighting WW1) it still rang true for this generation of Americans, they had not yet truly known a time of peace, and everything that they had was through hard-work and fighting for it.

In one of the best known speeches Sir Winston Churchill left us with these immortal words, “We shall go on to the end … we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength …whatever the cost may be … we shall never surrender”

Forty years after the armistice in Europe and Japan, I walked into my first dojo and was once again introduced to this concept. However, this time it related to me and my personal goals, for one of the first times in my life I actually had goals, up until then it was just work.



Late Grandmaster Gary Castanza



This catch phrase of Grandmaster Castanza, initially rose from a comment he made during his very first and very public Rape Prevention and Self Defense classes. To bring a point to his comments regarding the need to fight back – not just resist – and to keep fighting back until the attack was completely eliminated, emphasizing that  when your life is on the line, “…its always too soon to quit..”  This quickly became adopted at one of the tenants of our dojo encompassing not only the need to fight back, but the necessity to keep training even when we no longer feel the motivation. To keep going for the sake of our goals even when they seem as far away today as they were yesterday.  Get up out of your seat, gi up and workout. When your body is ready to give in, push it just a little further remember that the difference between a brave man and a coward is that the brave man goes just one second longer… He (or she) sticks with it when others around them quit.



Thomas Edison inventor of the light bulb
and movie projector



A common story shared about perseverance is that of Thomas Edison, and it was said the he tried and failed with more than 10,000 variations of filaments before he perfected the right one for the first light bulb. Had he quit after his first hundred or even thousand failings we may still be lighting candles to bring light to the darkness, and all that following in the stream of technology that might have been delayed or never even explored without the aid of artificial incandescent light; such as the movie projector, and thus your favorite movies and a major part of American culture would have been lost.

When I first started training in the mid 80’s the statistics said only 1 in 4 new students will make it to yellow belt. Only 1 in 10 of them will last to Advanced (green or blue) and only one in 100 of them will make it to black belt.  If Statistics are accurate then or now and an average of 1,000,000 people start the martial arts for the first time each year only 250 will make it to black belt or 2.5 out of every 10,000. If you make it to black belt you’re 1 in 4000 that step out of their comfort zone to train and don’t quit before its “over, over there.”   

A poem hung in our dojo back in the day which now also hangs proudly in my dojo today often referred to as the "Don't Quit" poem, you may research the beadth of the poem on your own, but the final stanza drives home the message:

Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

- Author unknown

Keep this in mind before you give up on your dreams. Talk to a mentor – if you don’t have one, find one. They’re important people on our paths of life. It’s always too soon to quit.