A few years back, I saw the movie Redbelt and was instantly struck by the depth of the ideas, philosophy and imagery behind this movie. If you haven’t seen it, you should rent it immediately. Here are three of the more powerful ideas that emerge during the movie:
The hero is a teacher of a martial art, and his teacher had taught him this maxim:
There is no situation that you cannot escape from. There is no situation that you cannot turn to your advantage.
Later, he begins to help a new student:
The first step is the hardest.
“And what is the hardest?”
To leave the outside, outside!
It turns out that the new student, a female, is a lawyer who was raped and is now emotionally struggling to move on. The teacher, to help her, attempted to help her by recreating the scene, and then finding the strength to “kill” her assailant. At the end of that emotional scene, she explodes, crying–one of the teachers’ more experienced students comes in to see and the woman who is obviously embarrassed. To this embarrassment and emotion, the teacher says this:
“Its alright–there’s no one here but the fighters.”
Yes!! So the question to us all, are you one of the fighters?