Orson Scott Card and the Ender series

In the past month, I have voraciously torn through Orson Scott Card's masterfully written Ender book series. There were four books in the titled Ender Quartet, and four more (with possibly more in the future) in the Shadow series. I have not begun the Shadow series, and though I have high hopes for it, I do not expect it to move like the Ender books did. The Ender Quartet is comprised of the books, Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. These books were amazing, and I just finished the last one two days ago. They filled me with such a great feeling of knowledge and understanding about so many things, and more than anything, those books preach hope.

I already miss having a new story to await me over the horizon, and I know that I will feel that even more after I finish the Shadow series in the next month. Ender's Game is quite well known, but his other books are not as greatly read. However, those who read them, love them. I do not think anyone who has ever read his books does not bear some affection for them. The first novel terrified me in a way and made me feel a great sense of sadness, because in some ways Ender's story of being tricked into xenocide touched something with me. The second novel, Speaker for the Dead, left me amazed and stunned at the end. Of all the books I've read, it was virtually the most meaningful piece of literature I've ever been blessed to see. To be honest, I doubt I'll encounter many books as meaningful as it. Xenocide took major leaps in metaphysical thought, and being the wannabe-metaphysicist that I am, I found it fascinating. Children of the Mind wrapped up the series as best as I could imagine, leaving some things to hope and to the imagination. More than anything, these books taught deep moral lessons, amazing concepts about ethics and about life, and showed how even the worst sins can come from the best people. Most importantly, it teaches you that there must be some good in everybody, and that if you are truly good, you can love everyone despite their sins.

Upon completion of the Ender Quartet, I felt a sadness for a couple of reasons. For one, I was sad that I had finished what had quickly become some of my favorite books. The main reason I was sad is because I realized what I wanted to be as an author, and suddenly gained a great fear that I will never succeed in my greatest ambition as a writer. Though I couldn't know now if I wanted too, because only time will tell. Still, I realized that I wanted to write something that would have as great an effect on others as his books had on me. Though that's such a lofty ambition (to have that much of an impact in life), it is still one I am compelled to aspire too. His books revolutionized the way I perceived certain things in my books, and made me create a number of new dimensions to it. I added the neural realm as a venue for the more important characters (all of which have some kind of telepathic status) to grow and exhibit more about themselves than I ever thought possible. I added multiple layers to Juris' relationships with other major characters, like Tirya and Ek'Litaso. Ultimately, I developed a clearer image of what I wanted my main characters to be when all was said and done. I wanted to move them beyond the archetypes with which I built them around, and make them something all on their own. I wanted my characters to exude the qualities I wished I had, and to do for their own fictitious world what I wish I could do for my own. When I realized this, I was scared, because such a thing seems so far beyond my abilities. That won't stop me from trying, however, because to quit now would be the ultimate sin against my ambition and potential. I will try to make my books great because I want to, and because it seems worth it to risk such a thing.

I would like to close with one of the better quotes from Ender's Game.
"I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."
I think this is why love can hurt so much, because when you come to understand someone so greatly, even though you know their faults, you still love them. And these faults often contradict our values, making it more painful. In the end, to love someone so much that you can look beyond their faults is often loving someone more than you can love yourself. At this, I say good night.

Entry for April 9, 2005

Forget what the clock at the end of the entry says, it was slightly past midnight when I began this. That being said, and for no real purpose, on with the entry.

It has often occurred to me that no matter what, no human can live alone. Though self-reliance and personal strength are highly crucial to our own survival and mental well-being, we similarly need other people. Often there is too much emphasis placed on the importance of either, when in truth it is the balance that needs to be struck that elicits the most stability and happiness within a person. I mention this because I realized the other day that I rely too much on myself, and not enough on other people. When I say rely, I don't necessarily mean in achieving all your own tasks, I more importantly mean confiding the inner workings of your soul, your relation to others, your own attempts at finding just where you fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is life.

In its purest form, love is the most powerful, life-shattering or life-elevating of all the relationships and relations that one human being can have with another. It is virtually impossible to truly define love, for I think that more than we can know, the essence of love surpasses our existence here and transcends to some eternal forum where things such as love are all that can exist. But for us humans, love is the thing of movies, of dreams, of the media, of video games, of everything. All things tie in to love at some point, even if not in the contemporary fashion which we would think it would.

To me (and this just my interpretation of what love is), love is this feeling, that though it may be strained and even hurt by the various pains and things in life, can never truly end. Between people, life may push them away, but love would never truly end, if it truly existed. I think love is justice in its own ultimate form. Love should not be necessarily correlated with intimcay or marriage, because love has many forms. I define love as feeling so strongly for someone else that your survival no longer matters during your interactions with them. Their survival becomes more important than yours, and even if this is not consciously comprehended, true love is always indicative that something in someone's mind has taken a glimpse beyond the confines of this world, and has thus been forever changed by it.

I'm not sure if I can say I truly know or understand love. To me, the ultimate love is when Eternity, though possessing all-encompassing existence and power, and needing nothing to define its existence, created a universe/realm/sub-existence where it even allowed life the capacity to hate Eternity. To create something knowing it may not understand things, that it may not appreciate creation, and that it may not treat others equally, basically, that the things in that creation will be flawed and imperfect, is the ultimate form of love. It was a total act of selflessness. If Eternity is eternal, then it is necessary that Eternity be supremely powerful. The embodiment of ultimate power is not needing anyone else, but Eternity decided to create something else anyways, sacrificing a part of its existence and thought to allow us to exist. That is a love that I cannot even begin to understand, but a love that I hope and pray that I may one day understand. The wonderful thing to me is that Eternity has decided to allow us to one day become eternal, and in becoming eternal, we become a part of the Eternity that created us. In doing so, we not only understand Its love, we become Its love. As we are today we are a product of Its love, Eternity's love made manifest.

I feel like I have a small grasp of this dimension of love. Love is moving beyond your own needs; it is the ultimate good and the definition of perfection. I have loved other people, familial love, but I am not sure if I have loved beyond the confines of my family structure. Maybe I do - it's hard to tell. I've never known anyone long enough to develop a true understanding of the dynamics of my relationships with them. With regards of intimacy and love with a potential or true soulmate, my experience is zero. I have never dated, or held a relationship in that aspect. It is one of my greatest faults in life, with regards to being a sociable human being, but it has given me time to think.

To a degree, however, I am tired of thinking. I'll admit that I am desperate for a soulmate relationship that at times is almost unbearable. This is a terrible weakness for me because it has the potential to put me into bad relationship situations. It may make me hopelessly attached to the first female who says they love me, or who I feel loves me, and I worry about being in such a way. The biggest hindrance to my having relationships is my own inaction. I just don't live too much in certain aspects. For some reason, I resigned long ago, leaving the game of life to watch from the hillside. Now I cheer on those who play, taking every risk, enjoying every gain, mourning each loss, but loving it all the same. In becoming a spectator I have lost one of the greatest dimensions of life, one that I can not really label, but that I understand in the depths of my mind. I won't try to explain it here; that would take too long, and could be the topic of another entry.

The important thing to understand here is this: nothing in life can be achieved through observing. It is through experience that we develop an appreciation of the differences in life. It is the same as color: we cannot appreciate red until we know blue, and it is only through seeing the whole of the color spectrum that we begin to understand just how amazing color can be.

I feel like I have come to understand many things about love. In truth, I may understand nothing, but conceptualizing is one thing I'm always willing to take risks with. But my lack of having truly related or fully opened myself to any other human being hinders me in ways I am only just beginning to realize. I cannot understand the full dimensions of love in this world until I have sampled and savored all of its variations. If life were a dinner, I would have skipped the more complex and strong-flavored foods in favor of a small few blands one. And though all things are interesting at first, the bland ones lose potency over time, until they no longer matter. If you draw nothing else from this issue, I hope it's this: don't be inactive in life - you'll have all of eternity to understand certain things, but for now, just enjoy being alive.

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"German philosopher (1844 - 1900). If love is madness, then I need to stop being so sane. With that, I bid thee good night.

A Change in Doing Things

From this point forth, I will try to avoid just doing essays on this site, for a couple to a few small reasons. The first of these reasons is that just doing essays is boring, and even though nobody ever reads this page, I feel the need to still make it not seem entirely monotonous (or more than it needs to be). The second reason is that by varying the ways I write here, I open myself up for even greater revelations, because openness in structure fosters a greater variety in thought.

A third reason is that always titling and structuring each entry in the form of an essay can often limit the topic I want to talk about. Don't get me wrong; the essay structure has its advantages, and I'll continue to use both, but I'll never be bound to either one. The fourth and final reason that I have decided to adopt this new structuring is my failure to maintain my own personal journal. Some of the things I'll talk about here would be some of the things I might have talked about at decent length in my own journal, though it's guaranteed that it will be highly impersonal here. I will share ideas over the web, but I feel no need to communicate my life's history via it. If you want to know, contact me. Otherwise, satisfy yourself with my thoughts about things in life. For all of you who are not reading this (100% of the population of people on this planet), enjoy!