You are born. Someone dumps pieces into your lap. You receive rough instruction on how they move. If you are lucky, an expert mentor provides sharp pointers on tactics, attacking style, and rules of the game. In the beginning, everything seems a bit confusing. There are many rules to remember and things to keep track of, but the objective seems mostly straightforward.
The next thing you know, you are on your own, playing the real opponent by yourself. With the mentor by your side, the best moves seemed obvious. Alone, figuring it out is more difficult than you imagined.
It’s your turn now, and, naturally, you hesitate. Occasionally you stumble upon a brilliant combination. An onlooker asks the secret for your success. But you really can’t explain what just happened. You make up something clever; the onlooker walks away, a puzzled look on his face.
More realistically, you blow it. You commit enormous blunders. You get all your pieces captured in a blink. You explore avenues that look promising but lead to solid brick walls. About this point, you get sick of losing and looking like an idiot. Confidence in tatters, you abandon your own ideas.
Across the way is another player who seems to be conducting a good game. You copy their approach, not knowing if it will work, and certainly oblivious to the intention behind their strategy. You can’t see what they are seeing or even know if they are seeing anything at all.
On the surface, things look good. Since the outcomes seem better than your own, you begin to feel you have nothing to lose. This takes you further, providing some illusory sense of genuine improvement. Until you lose your bearing, forget a rule or two, and find yourself in checkmate all over again.
Reset the pieces. Try again.
***
What do I really know about anything?
This has been my disclaimer for just about everything that I do. Like chess, you can explore life until you live to be 1,000. No matter what your experience, some new discovery awaits to rewrite your carefully constructed narrative. No matter how deep you go, there is always a deeper level to reach. But what are we truly discussing?
The trajectories of a single life outnumber the variations of the chessboard by at least a few billion. All the people you could have been. The places and events that shape who you are; the unrecordable impressions left by the people you encounter; the subtler moments that mock the language you need to describe them; the perspectives you will never see; the people you never will know; the near-misses that could have changed the course of everything, for good or ill. These are all that a life is.
This time, you know without question, you can go no further on your own. It is then that you discover The Master. Some sagacious mind has gone beyond and marked the line to follow.
If you can see three moves in advance, The Master know your three and has gone ten more beyond. This time you pursue, willfully abandoning the familiar. Until it happens. You see for yourself. A glimmer of what they are pointing to. The mechanics behind the orchestra. Your hesitance yields to a pristine clarity. The moves reveal themselves so clearly that the pieces seem to vibrate as you reach for them. Now, you are finally getting somewhere.
Yet, in the middle space between three and ten, between apprenticeship and mastery, things get difficult.
A bystander comes by, having observed none of your efforts, and asks, “What on earth are you thinking?”
Another player with even less experience chimes in, “I see what move you can make.”
These unsolicited interjections break the flow, inject doubt into your system, and interrupt your vision.
The hardest part is when your expert mentor returns and says, “This is not the way I taught you.”
Indeed.
By all means, keep going. The true learning has just begun.
***
I originally wrote this essay about life, chess, and learning in 2012 at age 29. My understanding has since evolved, yet I republish today with very minor changes. It remains one of my all-time favorite pieces, and I may have been right the first time.
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