Game teaches us not to look back
Saturday, September 25, 2010 02:56 AM
The Columbus Dispatch
Shelby Lyman
Chess is a refuge from life. No matter how demoralizing the outcome, we can set up the pieces and start again.
Games are rarely, if ever, played perfectly.
As Anatoly Karpov – world champion from 1975 to ’85 – cautioned: “It’s extremely important during a game to accept a situation like it is, not with thoughts or regrets of what you missed. So, in my life, I have tried and succeeded in many cases to forget everything that was in the past.”
As a grandmaster, Karpov personified that credo. Although physically he might have been seen as a 140-pound weakling, he had the heart of a lion.
More than two centuries earlier, Benjamin Franklin wrote his essay “The Morals of Chess” (1786), in which he compared life to a chess game that teaches us invaluable lessons.
“We learn from chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances or the state of our affairs,” Franklin wrote, “(and) the habit of hoping for a favorable chance.”
Anyone who plays frequently learns that the game does, indeed, teach that it’s frequently possible to snatch victory from the jaws of seemingly inevitable defeat.
Source: Columbus Dispatch
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