Saturday, December 23, 2006
checkmate
I stink at chess. I know I suggested that we have a Bobby Fischer night, but really, I'm awful. I've been getting my head handed to me repeatedly by this confounded machine all day, and because of the miracle of modern technology, the contraption actually taunts me. A second ago, it told me that I'd been mooned. How grotesque.
What I'm realizing, though, is that chess is a game of both strategy and cooperation even though it is a competition. The reasons I'm so bad at it are that I don't plan ahead well at all and that when I am trying to plan ahead, I'm more concerned with my own agenda than with what my opponent might do in response. So my plans get foiled because I haven't taken into account the consequences of each action.
In these ways, chess is not unlike a conversation or even a relationship. While we can't just fly willy-nilly through life with other people, but rather must plan a little, we also have to go with the flow and not get upset when all our plans backfire because we hadn't thought of what the other person's next move might be. Sometimes it's even good to anticipate a bit.
What I really wish, though, is that chess, life, conversation and relationships were all more cooperative and less competitive. I saw a chess game once in which each piece represented a different rhythm and each square on the grid provided a different tone or tune, so that the object of the game was not to conquer the opponent. Indeed, there was no opponent at all. Rather, the point of the game was to work together, placing the pieces (through legal chess moves) into a formation that would produce a symphony.
So maybe Anna Nicole Smith wasn't entirely drunk and/or brainless (maybe...but she probably was) when she made the suggestion about making beauuuuutiful dueeets. Maybe she was onto something amazing.
What I'm realizing, though, is that chess is a game of both strategy and cooperation even though it is a competition. The reasons I'm so bad at it are that I don't plan ahead well at all and that when I am trying to plan ahead, I'm more concerned with my own agenda than with what my opponent might do in response. So my plans get foiled because I haven't taken into account the consequences of each action.
In these ways, chess is not unlike a conversation or even a relationship. While we can't just fly willy-nilly through life with other people, but rather must plan a little, we also have to go with the flow and not get upset when all our plans backfire because we hadn't thought of what the other person's next move might be. Sometimes it's even good to anticipate a bit.
What I really wish, though, is that chess, life, conversation and relationships were all more cooperative and less competitive. I saw a chess game once in which each piece represented a different rhythm and each square on the grid provided a different tone or tune, so that the object of the game was not to conquer the opponent. Indeed, there was no opponent at all. Rather, the point of the game was to work together, placing the pieces (through legal chess moves) into a formation that would produce a symphony.
So maybe Anna Nicole Smith wasn't entirely drunk and/or brainless (maybe...but she probably was) when she made the suggestion about making beauuuuutiful dueeets. Maybe she was onto something amazing.
0 comments:
Post a Comment