There was a pillar in the center of the taekwondo studio. Painted a cheap white, the sort that’s haphazardly brushed onto warehouse walls; but in the center, a dark spot—there the paint was cracked and peeled, the old steel skeleton visible beneath the many dirty white coats.

It didn’t take more than a week for new white belts to learn why that spot was there, about shoulder-high and two palms wide. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Master Park’s fist struck the pillar again and again, rattling the glass mirrors and sending us scurrying to the back of the room before class. Over 60, his strength seemed stronger than ever. The cracked paint seemed to grow darker and darker with each passing month; perhaps it was blood stains mixed with sweat that produced the rusty color.

It wasn’t schoolwork that taught discipline—it was Master Park’s temple. In an age where yelling at students to the point of tears is considered cruel—that’s the environment I learned to thrive in. By pain—physical, psychological—and by the pressure they exerted on us.

And so there we were, 11, 12, and 13-years old red and black belts—the precursor to black belt—sitting with two-by-fours between our legs. We learned to strike the pine wood block open-palm with the side of our hand, once, twice, two-hundred times to flatten the wrist bone. All this in preparation for that crucial moment during our black belt test we would be called to break a two-inch thick piece of pine or a concrete cinderblock.

Without the practice under pressure, there was no way I’d have emerged with a thicker skin and a strict sense of order, along with a no-nonsense attitude. Speak when spoken to, but speak with authority. Practice with the same intensity as you would compete. Perhaps the pendulum has swung away from those—maybe I’m different now. But those hours spent wearing the starched uniform and different belts of many colors created a backbone for who I still am.

How odd it is, to be thinking about all this a decade later, standing at shortstop on the diamond. Childhood baseball was the same—endless hours under California nights fielding grounders, running light poles, taking batting practice. The same Master Park-like figures too, yelling screaming for us to hit the right cut-off man. Physical errors were acceptable. Mental ones got you sent to the bench in disgrace.

But now, with a language barrier and cultural differences as difficult to manage as laying off an 0-2 curveball, the game has almost become just that: only a game. The original elements of the sport that made it so intoxicating—the pressure, focus, strategy, and physicality—they’re all still there. But there’s much more beyond the field; picking up Korean phrases from teammates. Having them ask about America or how to say this in English. Forming relationships and building jeong (Korean word that roughly translates to empathy and relationship-building). Taking time to reflect on how my past relationship with sports has molded the present.

I’ve slowly come to see that many of the lessons to learn in life aren’t discovered until many years after you experience them. Our thoughts tend to generalize and categorize into grooves of past experiences. Only by being here in a foreign country, away from any close friends and family, have many of the lessons emerged.