Letters from the Academy (2017 UPDATED EDITION)
Chapter 7
Saturday Week 5
My Dearest Friends,
I hope this letter finds you well. It's now Saturday evening and as I write this, an amazing sunset sky is making the whole dorm room glow orange.
Classes in the advanced Tiger group are going very well, I'm truly enjoying the experience of being here. I've been getting along really well with the other students in the new class too. I remember when our beginners Crane group was disbanded I was worried about loosing the high level of camaraderie we had all developed within the group, but my worries were unfounded. The sense of belonging and camaraderie within the Tiger group is equally as strong, if not stronger. I also see most of my former Crane group friends every day and many of us still sit together at mealtimes, so everything is great in that respect.
Homesickness it much less of an issue now. I still get the occasional yearnings for home, but with so many friends and good people all around me, it's a lot easier to shake it off.
I wish I could say the same for my room-mate Po, The poor boy has had one of the worst weeks of his life. I know I mentioned before that I was worried about him, well it turns out my concerns were warranted.
Po had been looking more and more down as the week progressed, and in the early hours of Wednesday morning the tears returned. Me and my other room-mate Ono were woken by his crying. We both sat with Po and did our best to comfort him. His distraught state continued well into the early hours until it was exhaustion that eventually forced him to go back to sleep. The last time I saw Po upset, he'd told me about his grandfather dying, but this time, he was very reluctant to say anything and it increased my suspicion that there was more going on here than just simple grief.
When morning came, Po had barely managed to get an hour's sleep. He even slept through the wake-up call. Ono was wondering whether to wake him or not, but I gestured it would probably be better if we just let him sleep on. He agreed.
Missing classes here is a big deal. It doesn't happen often and is considered disrespectful to your instructors and teachers, unless of course you are sick, injured or out-of-action. I think Po's situation could have fallen into any of those categories, so before morning exercises began, both myself and Ono pulled the training instructor aside and explained Po's situation in the best way we could. The instructor was fine about it, and thanked us for letting him know.
Later that day, I made a point of trying to spend some time with Po. By then, I had become even more concerned about him. He'd made it to afternoon training but hadn't said a single word to anyone, at dinner he ate alone, and afterwards he went back to the dorm and just lay on his bunk, staring at the wall.
After some persuading, I got him to join me outside at the grassy ledge where I sit and enjoy watching the sunset most evenings now. Conversation was difficult, all I could get from him were subdued one-word answers.
Eventually, I found myself, in desperation, gripping him by the shoulders and pleading with him to tell me what was wrong, letting him know that I was really worried.
On hearing my concern for him, he burst into tears again and caved in. He told me everything, sobbing out all the details of what was wrong and why he was so desperately unhappy.
It turns out that for his whole life, Po has had traditional martial arts relentlessly drilled into him. His over-zealous parents had planned to train him and send him here to the academy even before he was born in order to attain the globally recognised endorsements from the academy that can bring great prestige and authority to the families who own and operate their own dojo's. At some point in the future, Po is to become the owner and manager of his family's high-profile dojo, and carry on the traditions of the teachings there. His parents are incessantly pushing him and expecting him to exceed all expectations to get top grades so the family name can remain strong and honourable within the powerful business circles to which it is affiliated.
However, among all of this meticulous life planning and scheduling, his family forgot to consider one rather important thing - what did Po want? From Po's perspective, his entire life has already been mapped out to its entirety, but never once had anyone asked if he was okay with it, except one person; his grandfather.
It was so heart wrenching to hear. It seems his grandfather was the only person in the world who knew about this and was working on Po's parents to try to ease some of the burden and pressure they were putting on him, the same pressure that had now begun crushing him again.
Po was completely trapped. To deviate from this high-pressure and uncompromising life-plan would mean being branded as a failure and it could bring dishonour to his family, something he desperately didn't want to happen. Yet he'd reached a point where he just couldn't do it any more, not for another moment longer.
This immense pressure and responsibility placed on his shoulders, the gruelling, rigorously intense levels of advanced training and learning he was being forced to take-on, the stress of his parents expectations for him to get perfect grades, and now his grandfather, his one and only advocate, dying; It was all too much for him. It had pushed Po past breaking point.
I could tell, metaphorically speaking, he wasn't just close to breaking, he was actually there; he was broken. He'd already stepped over the edge and was now plummeting into the depths of despair.
He was so distraught he ended up bleating out to me his biggest fear; a heavy secret he'd been carrying around with him for years, the weight of which had been crushing him. It was a secret he'd been terrified of his family ever finding out, but now Po just couldn't hold on to it any longer. He told me everything.
The secret is, that Po has absolutely no interest or passion for martial arts whatsoever, and he never has. He hates it. He finds it tedious, uninspiring and soul destroying. Even from a young age he has never enjoyed it, in fact, he abhors any kind of violence or fighting. The thought of him becoming a martial arts teacher just leaves him feeling mortified and depressed.
When he told me this, something clicked in my mind and I finally started to understand the real crux of the situation. I'd often wondered how Po could be a very skilled martial artist, yet remain so timid and anxious all the time. One of the most prominent by-products of learning martial arts is self-confidence. It's automatic, you can't really have one without the other; that's why Po's timid disposition has never made any sense to me, that is, until now.
With this new information, I realised that despite the impressive muscle-memory skills he's built up over the years, it's simply not in his nature to be a martial artist.
For Po to be the person everyone is expecting him to be, goes against the fundamental nature of who he is as an individual. Think of it like trying to teach a fish to climb a tree, or a butterfly to swim underwater. Sure, anyone can teach a kid a whole bunch of forms and manoeuvres through repetition drills, and if you start them at a young age, they'll probably get really good at them, like Po has. But martial arts is so much more than just the sum of its physical components; it's a philosophy, a code to live by, an ideology to subscribe to; and as far as I'm concerned, one of the most basic and fundamental rules in martial arts should be that you genuinely want to do it in the first place.
You can't just force it onto someone like that, not like Po's parents have done to him. I don't care if they run a high-profile dojo and have a reputation to upkeep; this is just so wrong, on many levels. Po has never been asked or given a choice. He's been controlled and pressured his whole life into becoming someone he just can't be, someone he's isn't, someone he doesn't want to be, and now it's destroying him.
Po admitted to me how much he dreaded having to take part in any form of full-contact training, and how it was like torture to him. When I asked why, he coyly explained that he has an ultra-low pain tolerance threshold. I had to stop myself tearing-up as he described the agony of how it always hurt so much whenever he was made to do any full-contact training or competing.
The more I heard, the angrier I felt. Are you kidding me? How can you expect anyone with an ultra-low tolerance for pain to willingly partake in full-contact martial arts? Especially a child. That one fact alone should have been more than enough to send Po down a completely different career and education path.
I don't think I'd ever felt quite so angry or enraged. I'm almost ashamed to say that the hatred and anger I was developing for Po's parents, was interminable. What the hell were they thinking? Surely they must have realised years ago that Po wasn't right for this?
All this time, his obsessed parents have been trying to force a square peg into a round hole, and now I was here witnessing the devastation of those reckless, selfish actions.
Soon after he'd told me everything, I watched Po's anxious and upset state evolve into just a quiet despondent numbness. I could see he was physically and mentally exhausted, but more than that, I could see that Po was broken. This was a boy who had lost all hope.
I've learned some very hard lessons on the battlefield, the most valuable of which was that when hope becomes lost, so can the will to live, and that's not a good place to be in, not good at all.
I was so worried for Po's wellbeing, I decided it would probably be unwise to leave him on his own.
I had to half-carry him back to the dorm room. He was so exhausted and fatigued he could barely walk. Once there I helped him onto the lower bunk bed and encouraged him to sleep, covering him over with a blanket.
I knew something had to be done right away, so after getting Ono to sit with him and watch over him, I set off to find Wufei.
I'm sorry guys, but I will have to pick this up in the morning and tell you what happened, as I can't keep my eyes open now. I must sleep.
Love as always
Quatre
End of Chapter 7
