Of Chess and Happiness

April 16, 2007 12:47 PM

was on my high school's chess team. I started playing chess in middle school, really enjoyed it, and kept playing in high school. Why? I don't know, it was fun. And that's why I wasn't very good at it.

Chess requires that you anticipate your opponent's moves, sometimes several moves into the future. I've heard that Grand Masters like Kasparov can see something like forty moves into the future of a game. That's ridiculous. And it's something I was never able to do. I enjoyed a lot of things about chess, and I enjoyed a lot of things about being on the team. In fact, I may have enjoyed those things too much--I never really took chess seriously.

It's strange, then, that I now find that I have the almost complete opposite character flaw, at least in some contexts. I've recently discovered that I have the ability to get so worried about future actions and their consequences that I negate all possible enjoyment from what I'm currently doing.

This sucks, and I wish I could undo it somehow.

2 Comments

dicta said:

i've got that too. i hate it. i sometimes worry about things so far down the road or out of my control that it's ridiculous. yet i cant stop.

April 17, 2007 8:08 PM

Ismael Tapia II said:

Yeah, it's completely ridiculous. Given enough time, I can turn a completely meaningless nonevent into something that will--at least in my mind--lead to the destruction of Western civilazation. I'm trying to be better about it, but sometimes it's tough.

April 20, 2007 3:55 PM

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