Lessons from ‘THE KARATE KID (1984)’

The Importance of obeying your teachers

The Karate Kid is a 1984 American martial arts drama film written by Robert Mark Kamen and directed by John G. Avildsen. It is the first installment in The Karate Kid franchise, and stars Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, and Elisabeth Shue. The Karate Kid follows Daniel LaRusso (Macchio), a teenager taught karate by Mr. Miyagi (Morita) to help defend himself and compete in a tournament against his bullies.

The first clip, ‘Wax on, Wax off’ — starts off with an important line by Mr. Miyagi — “Walk on road. Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, you get squished just like grape”. He says that the same thing applies to Karate, either you do karate or you don’t, in both situations you know what you want to do. But if you approach karate (any learning endeavor for that matter) with a confused mindset then whatever learning you gain will not bear you any fruit.

The other two clips, ‘Sand the Floor’ and ‘Paint the Fence’ are quite comical and quite intuitive. Here Mr. Miyagi asks Daniel to sand the wooden floor and paint the fence in a particular way — “Left the circle, Right the circle” and “Up And Down” respectively. Daniel initially has doubts about it but he follows his master’s orders and does the job without any questions…