The Echo You Didn’t Know You Left

Something strange happened to me recently.

A person I taught karate to — more than twenty years ago — reached out. Not a close student. Not someone I mentored for years. Just a kid who passed through my class for a brief moment in time, one teacher out of a team of teachers.

And they told me something that made my whole body go still:

I made an impact on their life.

It took them twenty years to work up the courage to say it.

And that alone tells you everything — because nobody waits two decades to tell a mediocre person they mattered.

But here’s the thing: compliments like that make me cringe.

I don’t wear them well.

Never have.

My whole life I’ve lived in the middle of the pack.

Not the best in the room — not the worst — just orbiting the middle.

Not cool, but not uncool.

Not slow, not fast, just… there.

I was good at karate, sure.

But Dom? Dom was the guy.

The star.

The one we’d all point at and say, “Yeah, that’s the one.”

So I never believed I was good at anything. Not really.

Not in a way that stayed in people’s bones.

Teaching, though…

Teaching was different.

Teaching felt like a trick I learned.

Something I could “pull off” because I knew how to talk, how to move, how to keep a room in orbit.

That stupid saying — those who can’t do, teach — it got in my head.

Made me think I was faking the whole thing.

So when someone pops out of the past, twenty-plus years later, just to tell me I mattered?

It feels awkward as hell.

Like they got the wrong guy.

But maybe they didn’t.

Maybe this is me finally realizing that the thing I’m best at — the thing that’s always been there — isn’t punching or kicking or winning anything.

It’s making people feel something.

Feel seen.

Feel capable.

Feel brave.

Feel like they could do something they never thought they could do.

Maybe that was the thing I never believed I had inside me — value — because I didn’t know what to do with it.

I spent years watching other people shine, thinking my job was to get out of the way.

Turns out, my job was lighting them up.

Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done.

And maybe the weirdest part is this:

I thought I was faking it.

But the people I taught — even the ones I barely remember — were feeling it for real.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve ever thought, “Does it matter? Does anything I do actually stick?” — here’s your answer:

Someone you barely remember is still carrying something you gave them twenty years ago.

They’re just waiting for the courage to tell you.

Go ahead.

Fact check me.

P.S. Angela — I didn’t forget you. You have to know that.