The Isochronism

I've officially spent 200 hours writing this year, as of just barely, and I've written approximately 168,000 words. By the end of the year I'm hoping to have finished two books this year, one 100,000 words (already complete) and the second about 120,000. So yeah. I feel like celebrating.

Now who wants to stay up with me for another hour until I get SP4?

Life is like a game. I mean, yes, it’s not always fun, and yes, it can become monotonous when most games never will, and yes there are real consequences in life, but still. Also, in life you can’t win. Even I can’t win, and I win at almost everything. No, in life you just keep playing and playing and playing and then you die. 

Life is sometimes like a stalemate in chess, with two bare kings, just one man unable to make progress against whatever he may be competing against. If you think that’s an obscure metaphor, just wait.

Okay I admit it. I love chess.

I haven’t always loved chess, but I certainly do now. This year I have played a total of 1876 games, and I’m confident that I could beat anyone here at chess. 

One of my favorite chess-related movie scenes in all of film is in the movie “Searching For Bobby Fischer,” a movie I hope at least one of you has heard of. 

The movie tells the story of prodigy chess player Joshua Waitzkin, and the climactic scene of the movie is a chess game between the main character, Joshua, and Jonathan Poe, another young prodigy. They’re playing the final game of a championship, and Jonathan Poe is playing recklessly, until Joshua sees him make a move that throws the entire game. But instead of winning, Joshua offers his opponent a draw. He tells Jonathan Poe, “You’re losing, you just don’t know it yet.” With a draw, the prodigies would share the title of champion. But because of his pride, arrogance, or recklessness, Jonathan Poe refuses Joshua’s offer. He doesn’t see the 12 move sequence that will lead to his loss. And then Joshua, our main character, goes on to win the championship.

I know the game is a fictional one, only loosely based on a real chess game, but I still feel bad for Jonathan Poe, for being too arrogant, too stupid to accept the draw offer. Perhaps a much smarter chess player is a man you’ve all heard of. That’s right, Garry Kasparov. 

Oh don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him. C’mon, he’s probably the greatest chess player in history. You have to at least know his name!

..Well in any case, he was once in a similar position as the prodigy Jonathan Poe. He was playing in The 1997 Fontys International Chess Tournament, and the tournament included 12 of the world's top players, including Kasparov himself. And in a game with Joel Lautier, a draw was offered by Lautier. I wonder if a voice inside Kaspurov’s mind whispered the same thing to him that Joshua told Jonathan Poe. You’re losing, you just don’t know it yet. 

But unlike Poe, who stupidly tried to win anyway, Kasparov accepted the draw offer. But do you want to know what’s funny? Kasparov wasn’t losing at all. In fact, he’d accepted a draw in a position that most grandmasters would have had no trouble at all winning. And you know what else is funny? In a chess tournament every drawn game gives each player half a point, while every won game gets the winner a whole point. And in the 1997 international championship, Garry Kaspurov tied for first place with two other grandmasters. All it would have taken was half a point, and he would have won the tournament being the international champion. And yet for some reason the best chess player in the world got scared, and drew a game that he could have won.

Life is like chess. It’s mind-numbingly complicated, full of different paths that could lead to victory or failure. And it’s overwhelming. Sometimes you play a different opening —like the boncloud for example— and you’re mocked for choosing a life path so unstable. But as the game progresses, and the complexity becomes almost overwhelming, we all sometimes hear a quiet voice telling us: You’ve lost, you just don’t know it yet. 

Unfortunately, this isn’t just something people believe specifically, it’s also something that they believe generally. According to the Pew Research Center, Sizable majorities express dissatisfaction with the economy and overall national conditions. And when they look toward the not-too-distant future, they see a country that will be worse than it is today. A survey published on April 24th 2023 showed that 77% of Americans now expect the nation to be more politically divided in 2050 – up from 65% who made that prediction five years ago. (Pew Research Center)

What’s more, Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has reached near record lows. Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling. Last year, 20% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time. (Pew Research Center.) 

And so the quiet voice of Joshua from “Searching for Bobby Fischer” is far from alone. In fact everybody is saying the same thing. We’ve lost. We just don’t know it yet. It’s easy to sympathize with the words of European singer Matt Bellamy who asks: “You really believe we could survive all of this? This black vacuum of the universe, it was designed to swallow us whole. It’s a losing game.”

And… sometimes I wonder if they’re right. My frustration with the world grows every day. You see, the world is like a chess game against my best friend, probably the only person in the world who can beat me at chess. In other words, things can only get worse. We’ve already lost. But it’s not in the world that I feel this hopelessness, it's in everything I try so hard to do. I’ve been running on the cross country team for two years now, and I was part of clubs for many years before that. My training means waking up every day to do between three and seven miles in the morning, then coming to practice in the afternoon to do just as many miles again. Practice is three hours every day, and our morning runs can take an hour to an hour and a half. That’s four hours a day, six days a week, for two years. 

I feel like I’ve given so much to cross country, and I just want it to mean something. Every day I get closer to my last race, and every day it becomes more clear that I’ll never become as good as my friends around me. Every day I want to quit, because it’s clear that I’ve already lost. I just don’t want to admit it yet.

I remember specifically a race a few weeks ago, my coach entered me in the JV race at a meet, after entering all my friends in a varsity race. I still had myself convinced that I was at least as fast as my friends, so seeing the entries to that race was a bit of a plow to my pride. I was determined to go out and prove that they were all wrong about me. As if all I needed was will, and the race would be mine. But it takes a lot more than will to run a race, and by mile three of that five-k it was clear that I hadn’t suddenly become twice as fast as I had been before. In fact, my time was almost as slow as it had been my first year of cross country. And in my head, I knew I’d lost. I wanted to cry, wondering what the point of it all was. I just wanted my sacrifice to mean something. 

I know exactly how Garry Kasparov felt in that international tournament. I didn’t want to lose, I would so much rather just quit. End the race with a “draw,” by choosing not to finish. But there was another part of me that told me the opposite. There was a part of me that whispered it’s not too late. Not yet. 

I’ve heard speeches and read essays about taking risks, telling me “you miss every shot you don’t take.” or “risks always pay off if you learn.” But I’d already missed the shot that mattered most to me. I’d already taken the risk, and it had failed. I didn’t need someone to tell me that I missed every shot I didn’t take, I needed someone to tell me the game wasn’t over yet. 

The Labor Force Participation is currently stagnant at about 62% according to the Federal Reserve Economic Database, nearly five points below its high of 67.3% in April 2000. That means there are fewer people than ever before who’ve given up searching for a job entirely. Perhaps those people aren’t afraid of taking risks, but they think that it’s already too late to take those risks. Perhaps they look at the future, and wonder how we’ll survive this black vacuum of a universe, that constantly tries to swallow us whole. 

Maybe there are those among you who feel the same. You had goals for the future that have all fallen through, and your life’s game of chess seems completely lost. 

And that’s why I want to tell you, it’s not too late. It’s never too late to change your life. And so I’m begging you to keep playing. Don’t give up because you don’t see a way forward. Keep running, even if there’s no way you could be the best. Because then you won’t have to spend your life wondering if you could have been a international chess champion. 

Jonathan Poe didn’t win the chess game against Joshua. And unfortunately, I didn’t win my cross country race either. My time was still relatively slow. But in a race of five hundred kids, I was the only one who crossed the finish line smiling. You see, running is like chess. If you have the chance to win, or capture “En Passant” (which is french for “in passing”) a master like me will always capture “En Passant.” 

Yeah, I’m still not super sure about these metaphors. But there will always be tomorrow to fix them.

You'll notice I changed my name, dear readers of my update feed. There were many reasons for this, but as stated in my member title, "Bondsmith-Edgdancer" was a little boring for me. I apologize for the confusion. Also it's worth noting that I now have a very cool profile picture, a snapshot from the cover of my first official book. The artist really outdid himself, I wish I could showcase more of the cover. 

Also, writing is the best. Nothing else needs to be said.