Chess

CHARITY CAN BEGIN WITH CHESS

By Stephen Wilson

 

It was painfully tedious! I had planned precisely every English lesson

but had another half an hour before the lesson. I knew from past

experience that you could never be certain whether any of those plans

might work as children are not automatic robots but are all exceptionally

unique! Anything can happen. While I was waiting the five-year-old

son of the head teacher was growing restless . His mother was teaching

in the adjacent room. He seemed bored out of his mind. Then I saw

something wonderfully enchanting! It was a chess set. Now Hans

Christian Anderson wrote stories about pots and pans speaking and

this chess set beckoned to me " Play with me". So I took the set and

persuaded the boy to learn the first basic moves in chess as well as

some verbs in English. And he seemed to learn the main moves

quicker than I anticipated. At least the game helped him calm down

enough not to pester his mother who was teaching. The off shot of

it was that I ended up giving some English lessons in the form of chess

to him for the next few weeks. So I have found that chess can, from

time to time, act as a continuation of English lessons by other means.

 

But I might go further than that! An old proverb states that: 'Charity

begins at home'. I never liked this proverb as it was misconstrued

as implying in a mean-minded and myopic way to 'Take care

of your own but be indifferent to the strangers ' or 'Don't love the alien'.

I would paraphrase the proverb with 'Charity can begin with chess'.

By charity, I don't mean the narrowly defined meaning of just giving

donations to this cause or helping someone from a distance. I

mean the original meaning; Loving respect! For instance, a student

who worked with orphans told me how one volunteer turned up at

an orphanage and taught everyone to play chess! He spent time

with the children and taught them a useful skill. The great thing about

teaching chess is that you don't need vast resources or funds

but only an inexpensive chess set . Today I just managed to buy one

for only 300 rubles from a kiosk which comes to about 5 dollars.

 

By teaching children chess we are not just offering a game of

amusement. Nor is it just a case of improving logic. Learning to

play chess is also an exercise in emotional intelligence, or more

appropriately, moral philosophy. Children need to learn that playing

chess is about learning to lose graciously. That is, if a person loses

he should not go into a tantrum and overturn the chess board. This

might seem like a platitude. But all too often people perceive life

in terms of either being a total winner or total loser . But despite the

tendency to make instant judgments about people there are no

total losers or winners. We all lose at something. In addition, it is

possible to interpret losing as a form of winning and vice versa.

So ideally, a child would learn to slowly cope with losing and would

learn that failing exams or not getting into the best university is not

the end of the world. There are also many different ways of

realizing yourself or developing your talents. Losing is an imperative

must to develop an immunity system against the endlessly

capricious assessments which are being made about us. So chess

can be viewed as one way of mastering your own negative emotions by

learning not just logic but patience, tolerance and even empathy

when we feel sorry for the person we beat in the game. If you think

this is banal then ask yourself the following question: 'How many

forms of suicide have been committed by people because they

lost some job, career or sports game? ' Although suicide is a very

complex and often inscrutable act there are cases where the cause

is directly related to the person having a very narrow perception of

what constituted losing or winning in life! What if the person had

learnt a more open minded view of winning and losing? Learning

to play chess in the proper way would have given the person a

more liberating view on how to live life and go on.

 

So at the end of the game of chess there are two kings on the

board. The player who has become king of himself or herself and

the chess figure of the king. And maybe three kings will appear if

both players have attained some kind of peace of mind!