Know your enemy and know yourself. Since Sun Tzu’s Art of War, it’s been a basic principle of war, to know your enemy’s weakness, to know where to strike. It’s a basic principle of strategy to know your own weak point, to know what to defend. If we know only know the enemy or only ourselves, we will be defeated at least as often as we win. If we know neither, we will inevitably lose (blind luck notwithstanding).
So we have to know our enemy – as well as possible, because he will doubtless put his strongest defence at his weakest point – at the place he expects our attack to succeed, where he expects a breach. And we have to face up to ourselves, to the darkness and weakness that we deny exist, while knowing that denial itself is a weakness.
When we organise our defences, we automatically, subconsciously, concentrate them around our weakest points – around the things we’re afraid to let out, or afraid to lose. In short, around our fears. This tells an enemy exactly where to strike, because if he can once break through our defence, he has not only taken out our strongest resistance, but has also hit a weak spot. Nasty. But strategically nice.
So: if we can know ourselves well enough to know the weakness within, we can turn it into – if not a strength – then a tactical diversion. After all, as Sun Tzu so blandly pointed out: All warfare is based on deception.
This is key when it comes to sparring – if I know I’m a kicker, and my opponent prefers to punch, I can use that to stay in kicking and out of punching range – but he will catch on quickly and move in, thus shutting down my preferred weapon and bringing his own into play. This makes the successful fighter the unpredictable one – the one who has no habits, and who adapts fastest to the tactics and style of the other: that is, the one who learns about his enemy faster. And to become that fighter? My first challenge is to identify and eliminate the weaknesses in me.
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