Ever since I started this blog and since people have actually been reading it, I’ve been getting asked here and there what the quote that graces my banner is and why it’s there. Sadly, this is something that takes a while to explain and cannot totally be comprehended in a short five minute description. Although this topic may have no real connection to parkour, it does have an influence on my life and the way I train.
I first picked up Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, eight years ago when I had just turned thirteen. I was reluctantly part of a school “reading club” that I only signed up for because it got me out of an unneeded class. Most of the books I didn’t care about and most I didn’t actually read. Upon receiving Ender’s Game from Mrs. McLeod, she brought me aside and with a smile mentioned that I, in particular, would appreciate this book. I was stupid and young and tossed her words away thinking initially that this book was just another like the others. (I’m sorry where ever you are)
The club ended and I went on to endure the troubles that life gave me in middle school until a year later I picked up the book on my own and read. To my immature mind the book was stimulating. Ender was a kid full of mass potential and super-hero like qualities. The story itself made me enjoy it. Ender became my first role model. He was silent but inquisitive, small but powerful, and, most importantly, deadly but ever so compassionate.
I’ve read the book probably somewhere along the lines of seventeen times since that year and each time my interpretation of the book grew stronger and more mature. It wasn’t until my latest read last year that I believe I interpreted the book to it’s full meaning. After reading so many times, it has become clear to me that Ender’s Game revolves around one solitary quote, “The enemy’s gate is down.”
In context, this sentence is just an interesting battle tactic that Ender employed. Simply put, this was the only battle tactic Ender ever used during his entire stay at the battle school that stayed constant. He didn’t force his squad into formations because a formation is a tactic used to limit the thinking that was done by it’s respective squad members. But this is where the genius takes off. Ender didn’t see any quality in having drones. He wanted living, breathing soldiers and to do this all he had to do was give them something as simple as perspective.
The battle room was a square-ish room with “gates” on either side that the companies would enter through and compete. Ender wasn’t a genius because he could employ the right formations at one particular time or because his soldiers were any more technically advanced than the others. Ender won because he refused to believe that the battle room was side to side. This is an inherent reflex that we all develop shortly after birth. We see the world as a horizontal landscape with restrictions placed on the sky and the earth. By instilling the concept of the battle room being up and down, he forced his soldiers to think and cope to a four dimensional plane. By having the enemy’s gate down, they superseded the hierarchy developed after birth that was sideways thinking. They always approached their conflicts from the top down. Ender didn’t win his battles because of skill. He won because he understood perspective.
Perspective is an interesting concept that can either limit or expand the way we view our world. Perspective limits our vision when we use our immediate surroundings to define the direction our life is taking. The best perspective is to have none (although in technicality this may also be a form of perspective). For instance, taking a look back on the passing week and becoming depressed that you missed yet another test, your grades are failing, your mom is going through hard times, and maybe you had a fight with your significant other is bad perspective. Is it wrong to be depressed? Not necessarily. But becoming depressed because “my life is falling into pieces!” is. And this is what depression is: a limit.
My little brother, Michael, like Ender, is another one of my greatest influences. My brother was born deformed with a syndrome labeled Goldenhar. He was born with no left ear and significant deformities. I often describe Michael to people who ask and most often am responded to with, “Oh my gosh that’s so terrible!” Is this really terrible? My brother is easily one of the happiest and loving people I have ever come across in my twenty years. He doesn’t realize the super human qualities that usually determine his day to day life and in that there is solitude and humility. He’s inspiring. Diseases and death don’t always have to be as tragic as we often make them out to be. I will never again get to see my Grandpa Treat’s face again, but his smiling face represents one of my earliest memories.
On a different note, stairs are a physical form of limiting perspective. It is through this view in how I structure my training. Do I need to walk up these stairs? What if I crawled; on my hands, face down, or upside down, or sideways, or on the railing? Or, do I even need to take these stairs at all? This is one of my reasons in becoming a traceur.
These reasons are why Ender’s words grace my banner. Ender’s Game is symbolic in the same fashion The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was. We all are the soldiers and the officers are life. Each one of us has the potential to break through the chains that limit our vision and our creativity. All we need is the right perspective.
-Charles Moreland
