The dojo is a great place to meet different people. It attracts people from all walks of life, and training in a very real sense is a great equaliser. Religious belief (or lack thereof), ethnicity, income, gender, age and education – those things should not effect on what you accomplish at the dojo. On the mats we are all equal and the only distinction is made based on hard work and dedication, which ultimately results in a better skill set which we then share with everyone.

But as we go through our journey, we inevitably meet some curious folk on the way. And dealing with them can be a real test of our character… So who are these strange people?

The other day I saw a fantastic quote by Boxing legend George Foreman:
"Boxing is like jazz; the better it is, the less people appreciate it”
 
As a person who spent most of his life working as a professional musician as well as studied music quite extensively, I connected with this instantly. 
 
When I shared this quote on social media, a large number of the people who responded were musicians. This was to be expected, seeing as they probably related to Jazz being a hugely under-appreciated genre of music, often only truly understood by other musicians.

It also made me think of the recent speech made by Meryl Streep, where she famously said that ‘Mixed Martial Arts… are not the arts’. It made a lot of people in the martial arts community – practitioners and fans alike – angry at the fact that another artist (and in fact one of the most decorated and celebrated artists in recent history) made such a claim.

Was Streep correct? If so, what’s the difference between sports and arts? At which point does one become the other? Can they overlap? What about combat sports and martial arts, can those questions apply to these two as well? 
What, in a bigger-picture sense, is art?