The Sacred Stone: Martial Arts and Your life

Its interesting to hear others experience with martial artists as its so varied from person to person. It ranges wildly from sport to tradition, from daycare alternative to self defense. Everyone enters the circle of martial arts for a different reason and gets different things from it. I personally came to it for self defense and stayed for the sport aspect. My father did taekwondo as an attempt to bond with my brother and when my brother stopped showing up my father stayed as a means to get fit and have a social life.

There are almost flavors for martial arts that are seemingly custom tailored to catch people who have certain tastes. Most Judo clubs are for all intensive purposes solely sport dojos and focused on tournaments and competing under the fixed rules. Karate is seen as a great way to teach your kids respect and have fun. Kravmaga forgoes all the pop and circumstance of belts, and focuses almost solely on self defense and "Street" encounters. There are cardio kickboxing classes whos primary goal is fitness and sometimes tout self defense. These are gross overs simplifications and I am ignoring a lot of the nuances for the sake of brevity but for the most part certain styles do have stigma and branding associated with their flavor of cool aid.

Despite all these differences and flavors of kool aid, the one underlying theme I find in martial arts is the common thread of devotion and sometimes fanaticism it can seem to instill in its participates. To the non initiated its just some hobby or everything is "karate" or "kung fu" But to those who do experience martial arts and stick with it it becomes something special.  I find this especially true amongst novices who its "clicked" for. I find nothing is as loud and and happy to talk about its new martial art as a newly minted lower belt. And there is nothing wrong with that! Its good. Many of the people who I know who participate in martial arts consider it a pretty significant point in their life till it no longer is.  If you gym only costs 100$ a month you are paying around $1200 a year to participate and that adds up pretty fast as far as hobbies go once you add in gas, gear, and tournaments. 

So what is it that makes martial arts such a large part of many peoples lives? Why do so many people flock to certain styles over others? How big of a deal is your marital arts practice to you?