CHESS & LIFE

"Chess is not Life,all Life is chess."  
                                 -Ho Chi Zen
hola,
i graduated high school at 16 and had i been older
would've become either a morgue attendant or butcher's boy.
shortly thereafter i had,what i now
recognize was my first of several nervous breakdowns...
but today's blog is about chess.

i was taught and schooled in chess by
 the NYC YMCA Jr.Chess Champion
himself Waddell Holmes,
who luckily went to the same high school
and was black and nerdy before it was cool.
we played over 500 games and i won one,
yes one but i never gave up and i leaned a lot
so much so that i destroyed all but
 the better players i faced both before and after
my breakdowns.

when i worked
at thew Clift Hotel for nine years
there was a bellman who was banging
my BFF Kim and he thot he could play,
he was wrong on a lot of things
including his ex who was exactly like The Mirage
(i.e. psychotic on occasion)
anyway we were halfway into
 a game in the lobby late one night
when a guest walked in and glanced
at the board and told the bellman he had already lost,
which he had and did.

this is not me bragging about my chess playing
when we had The Stone Boyz as soon
as they reached the age of reason,
about five or six, i tried to teach them both
Critical Thinking and chess.

so i always won, one day
Z Boy asked how come i
never "let" him win
and i was happy to explain
"because Life is not like that,
you have to do your best
even when you lose"...

i think this attitude has helped me
cope with being disabled
maybe it can help you too?

aloha2utoday
namaste
mega