“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive.” – Rush
A computer once beat me at chess. It lost at kickboxing, though.
The Mrs. and I have recently been playing chess. It’s not a lot of chess, it’s mainly on Saturday nights when things are a bit slower. I’ve been enjoying the games. If I were to guess, before the last time we played, the games tilted slightly in my favor.
I think I’ve won about 30. The Mrs. was still sitting at, well, zero wins.
30-0.
Don’t think poorly of her. The Mrs. is going from a standing start. At one point in college, I lived with eight other guys in a house, and nearly all of the time a chess game was going. I could generally beat everyone in the house by the end of the school year. It took a while for one guy, about four months. First, he wiped the floor with me, then he and I traded games. By the end of two semesters?
I usually won. I have played a lot more chess than The Mrs. I will say this, though, she’s smart as a whip, and when I give her position analysis and show her why she lost the game, she listens.
The Mrs. doesn’t listen like someone who wants to defend why they did what they did. She listens with the ears of someone who wants to learn, who wants to get better. There has been exactly zero ego in learning the game for her.
Did I mention that The Mrs. is competitive? Really competitive?
Ever notice that Tom Cruise has a tooth perfectly centered under his nose, like it’s one-half tooth too far over? Now you’ll never be able to unsee that. You’re welcome.
The last time The Mrs. and I played chess, we played three games. The first game, I crushed her. By the start of the mid-game, I was up on pieces and position. It was like a velociraptor in a room full of bacon-wrapped kittens covered in pudding. Then the next game. Again, by the mid-game, I was up. I was toying with her king like a teacup poodle lords over a pork chop, getting ready for checkmate.
Then, she moved.
Then, I moved. That’s the rule, right?
But my move made it so she had no legal moves left. The Mrs. wasn’t in check, but couldn’t move. I was winning, decisively.
But if she has no legal moves and her king isn’t in check?
It’s a draw. The score was now 30-0-1.
My blunder, her draw. The next game went, shall we say, a little differently. The start went okay. Then, in the mid-game? She took control and by the beginning of the end-game? I was breathing for air harder than Biden sniffing a teenager. Which Biden? Apparently any of them.
What mall did they get this picture taken at?
Then? I caught a break. The Mrs. was up on pieces and position, but I found a way out. I could keep her king in perpetual check.
The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.
The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.
The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.
Note: I couldn’t win, but I could make the game as annoying as an 8-year-old asking, “Are we there yet?”
Thankfully, there’s a rule for that. It’s called?
A draw.
We went from me constantly crushing her, to her lucking to a draw, to me grasping to find a way out of a game without a loss.
30-0-2.
Good for The Mrs.
And good for me. Now I’m going to have to work to bring my A-game. And Saturday nights just got better.
Why?
Would it be better if I could crush her in chess every evening like Oprah crushes couch cushions? Of course not.
I told my barber to cut my hair like he would for Tom Cruise. He made me sit on two phone books.
The best victories in life are going head to head with someone near your level in skill. Going all out. Pushing each other to be better. I mean, I can beat up any number of third graders. Honestly, I have no idea how many third graders I couldn’t beat up.
I could do it all day. It’s really not a challenge. Seriously, I could beat up lots of them.
But fourth graders? I mean, I could be at least the third-best player on the fourth-grade soccer team.
Life is challenge. Life is struggle.
And thank heavens for that. Or thank Heaven for that? (Stick with me – this isn’t a sermon.)
Speaking of Heaven, from the time I was just a little Wilder, I caused a *lot* of problems at church. I distinctly recall that I colored a picture of Jesus with His skin being bright purple. On purpose.
My only excuse is that I was five and had no glitter.
The Sunday school teacher came up to me and said, “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t purple.”
I replied, “Well, please allow me to retort. Jesus is God, right? Well, if He wants to be purple, He can be purple.”
How can you argue with logic like that? Even kindergartners score some points now and then. I last saw my Sunday school teacher when I was thirty. She was really thrilled to see me. I think she was just happy I hadn’t started the Cult of the Glittery Purple Jesus. And, yes, all of those things really happened.
But back to heaven, or in this case, Heaven.
When they described Heaven to me in Sunday school, I was as appalled and indignant as a precocious five-year-old can be.
Sunday school teacher, describing Heaven: “You’re happy all the time. Nothing bad ever happens. You wake up and everything is fine.”
Five-year-old me thought: “Well, that sucks. It’s stupid. That sounds boring.” Even then, I was wise enough not to throw out a level-five heresy in the middle of Sunday school. Jesus might turn me purple or something. I’m certainly glad they didn’t teach me about Valhalla then, because that sounds much, much better than Heaven: Wake up. Fight and get soused and maybe die. Wake up. Repeat.
What did the Vikings call English villages? Chopping centers.
Sure you teach little kids the things that you think they like. But me as a little kid? Peace was the last thing on my mind. But I’m not alone.
When you look at the life of Jesus, He didn’t spend it sitting on fluffy pillows and eating Ding-Dongs®. Nope. If you think WWJD, remember, taking a whip and kicking vermin out of church is within the realm of permissible actions.
Jesus was clear in that: life is the struggle.
- Life is not about the easy way out.
- Life is not about running out the clock in the 20 years until you retire.
- Life is not about being nice.
If you played your life like a video game, your goal isn’t to have a pleasant but non-threatening experience. You want to climb the mountain, fight for the fair maiden, and drink from the skull of your enemy. I want The Mrs. to be kick-ass at chess, so when I win, it means something.
It meant something to The Mrs. when I had to force a draw to save my sorry (rare NSFW word coming) ass.
That, my friends, is life. Life is the struggle.
And my bet at Heaven is that it’s more like this:
LEVEL ONE COMPLETE.
PREPARE FOR LEVEL TWO.
I started a job digging deeper and deeper holes – but that was boring on so many levels.
Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s live life.
Bring.
It.
On.
Take big bites.
Who is with me?
Speaking of games,, Purple Jesus and Tom…
Consider the Universe Game from Jesus’ point of view. A literal trillion galaxies (latest estimate) each with a hundred billion or so stars, most with exoplanets that will have intelligent life on them sometime in their billions of years of history, all created as a playing field by Dad.
Poor Jesus gotta bounce around all these places like a pinball over eons of time,, dying in each civilizations’ chosen execution device to spread the Gospel on the local equivalent of sheepskin because the rules say he gotta show up before they develop the Internet and would just dismiss him as another crazy blogger.
Over and over and over Jesus gotta die, kinda like Tom did in that alien invasion movie.
In some of the games Jesus really is purple. The Devil never wins no matter what temptation each world has to offer. Jesus is winning 10000000000000000000000000-0 because Dad is infallible. Lucky for Jesus the universe is running out of hydrogen for new stars to form – the end of the game is in sight! Jesus – MVP!!!
I mean, it’s literally gotta be this way if you believe All Lives Matter…
Go read the Narnia chronicles. Or Perelandra, or … Oh never mind. What are they teaching them in the schools these days?
“What are they teaching them in the schools these days?”
Cosmology. A very, very interesting subject.
https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/~george/ay21/
We’ve come a long way in only a hundred years since 1920 and the Shapley-Curtis Debate, which is sadly taught today in few if any history classrooms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debate_(astronomy)
https://apod.nasa.gov/diamond_jubilee/debate20.html
Hubble made his epic discovery of V1 in the wake of the Great Debate, and his subsequent research confirming the Expanding Universe was so successful they named a space telescope after him…
https://futurism.com/hubble-variable-1-the-star-that-changed-the-universe
http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/hubble.html
Maybe two thousand years from now, the length Christianity has had to mature, humanity will know a lot more about Cosmology. I hope so.
It is the study of cosmology that always brings me back to God. That and some other experiences (some already written about, some that may make the grade some day).
Oh, and PEZ. How is that not a sign?
Well, if he can be purple . . . 🙂
Your post reminds me of the scene in The Matrix wherein Morpheus explains to Neo that the first iteration of pseudo-reality failed because there was no kickback, no friction, no rub. (Have to paraphrase here, because I haven’t seen the flick in ages and my Luddite Pro non-smartphone doesn’t play movies on its dot-matrix screen). If living were easy, we’d all go Richard Cory.
According to the Buddha, the first noble truth is, Life is dukkha. Dukkha is generally translated as ‘suffering’, although I personally prefer the more earthy and apt ‘dookie’ in translation. Life ain’t all unlimited Pez and beer pong, no matter what you were promised in college.
In fact, no less an authority than Job, that quintessential Debbie Downer, purportedly muttered, “Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” Likely right after taking a rake to the ‘nads, trying to avoid another pile of dukkha on life’s highway and not watching too closely where he was stepping.
Bottom line, embrace the suck. Into each life some rain must fall.
Eh. The suffering was never meant to be. The challenge was. Do you think Mr. Wilder and the Mrs. were suffering during the chess match?
Shoot, even in most video games there’s no permadeath.
Man is born to sorrow because of human nature and entropy. We can’t seem to help ourselves.
My biggest personal revelation was that good is made better by bad. If there’s no threat of bad? Is the game even worth playing?
Chess is a construct of the white male capitalist pig patriarchy.
The colors of the chess board symbolize systemic racism of a kind that won’t exist when the evolved enlightened faculty lounge beings take over and build Wakanda.
Comrade kommissar (CPUSA) Barnie Sandlers will be the historic chess czar and all of your victories will be redistributed to the wife in the interest of fairness and equality.
Forward! Yes we can.
They really did try to wokefy chess. “Why does white have to go first????”
Life IS a challenge. My biggest problem was deciding on which challenge to face. It’s now down to the challenge of making the best of what I know is limited time. I think I’ll be a spectator when I can, and cheer those that realize the challenges all end in the same way.
Yes, the same fate will hold for all of us. We had best use our time doing the most important things.
Oddly enough the Bible doesn’t give a very clear picture of what “heaven” would even be like, which is consistent with the idea that it is impossible to adequately explain something on an eternal scale via human understanding and the written word. That is why most theological musings about the post-resurrection existence are basically “it will be better” and also why theologians and clergy alike tend to focus more on the here and now than the hereafter.
IIRC C.S. Lewis compared Heaven to sex. Imagine a 6-year-old boy being told that, one day, he’ll be married and get to enjoy conjugal bliss with a wife.
“Will there be chocolate. And Minecraft?”
“There could be. I guess. ”
“But there might not be, right?”
“True, but trust me…”
“Conguga blitz is stupid!”
I expect God laughs at us a lot.
I used this example this weekend. Thank you.
Absolutely. My brain isn’t big enough to understand it, so why beat myself up over it???
I had a chess set once. Couldn’t find anyone to play with me so I took it to the pawn shop.
(groaaaaaaan)
I like Mark Twain’s observations in “Captain Stormfields Visit to Heaven.” It at least admits the possibility that G*D has a sense of humor.
Which makes sense. Why else create Hot Pockets?
You should write a two part book about what you’ve overcome up until now and those things you see in your future. You could call it “My Struggle.”
And I could read it in mine comfy chair . . .
I gave you a like. It was literally the least I could do.
Incidentally, I beat my ex-wife at chess until she divorced me.
The games are getting better. Or she’s spiking my drinks.
Americans are astonishingly retarded and enslaved now.
Americans scream that the USA never had churches or black people before today.
Americans will look you in the eye and say that their shoes come from government shoe factories.
Americans insist that the US has always had TSA groping and food stamps.
Americans say that everyone worked for free when there were no minimum wage laws.
Americans swear everyone died when there were no seatbelt laws.
Americans say that there would be no possible way schools could exist without taxes.
Disgusting.
“Americans” say these things.
*** Delete after reading ***
LM
LM, as always, thank you so much. And, as always, it’s great when I see your comments!
Mr. Wilder, perhaps I have the dirtiest mind here. When I think about a man and his wife playing chess, I immediately recall a line from that delightful movie, “Blazing Saddles.”
Hey, playing chess is fine. But sometimes it’s good to do the other thing instead, y’know?
Ha! I’d forgotten that line! Good call.
If you want a fresh start, at a game try “Santorini”. It’s a wonderful, simple, remarkably deep game. And if you get bored of the basic game, there are dozens of special power cards to spice things up. Complexity is between checkers and chess, but I like it much, much better than either. It’s also attractive to look at.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194655/santorini
Basic rules: Two players. Take turns placing your two pieces on the 6×6 board. Move one of your pieces, then build next to it (one story, at the next available height, on any of the 8 possible squares on the board not occupied by a playing piece). You can climb up one level, or jump down any number. Buildings can be up to three stories tall, and then you can place a roof as the fourth level. You can’t stand or build on a roof. First one to have a piece stand on top of a three story building wins. First one to be unable to move or build loses.
You can play this with pennies (buildings) and dimes (rooves) on scratch paper. You could use PEZ as your playing pieces, if they’re different colors and you keep your fingers dry. Mmmmm, PEZ…
Mmmmmm, PEZ.
As long as The Mrs. doesn’t start study on opening book lines, I’m safe. But Santorini looks like a lot of fun. On my list. Thank you.
No. From the athiest side of the right that is begrudgingly tolerated by the 80%+ of you on our side who are conservative. I’m an existentialist, life sucks, the communists are right about that, their solutions are just infinitely worse than the natural organic remedies developed by culture. World is alien and hostile, knowledge largely illusory, especially the more abstract the knowledge becomes (such as organising society). If the world is absurd, that’s all the more reason to look to tradition and custom than utopian schemes.
Pleasure is pleasure, pain is pain. Pleasure is good, pain is bad. Any alternative just a comforting spook and demonstration of the deep yearning of humanity for transcendence and comforting abstract rationalisations.
Thought maybe you’d appreciate a novel response from a different kind of right.
Actually, there’s no begrudging in my world. I have close friends who are athiests, and I never cease to learn from them. They are, I’ve noted, actual athiests. There is a version that denies God because they hate Him.
The tautology is hard to disagree with. But unending pleasure becomes a torture. And the pain of lifting the weights makes us strong. Those require no higher power.
Plus? The iron never lies.
Very much appreciated.
Thanks John. Dopamine is the engine our minds run on. Increase the dopamine, feel better (experimentally tested and confirmed). I will concede, in vr holodome, every need caterd for,, dopamine drip, plugged into the matrix, next 40 years eating bug paste but it tastes like wagyu…yes I do pull back.
I can’t explain why I pull back, I legitimately think brave new world is perfectly fine. Maybe the only issue with this place is considering the scale of their lies and the wanton destruction they so revel in…we need way better soma for this nonsense.
Yup. You pull back for the same reason I would – it’s not real, it’s a fake. Which is why I love real competition. Or at least the AI competition Elon Musk set up for all of us.
By the way, militant athiesm is juvenile and spiteful. They ran from Darwin the moment they finished beating Christians over the head with him didn’t they?
Got nothing to do with good faith efforts to understand man’s position; got everything to do with petty spite. They are embarrassing…where are these brave heroes now to take down this hideous faith? Nowhere to be seen.
I used to be the religion for idiots type…than I grew up. In so many ways the disaster of this world is due to almost no one else I my generation growing up (I’m 36).
When I was about your age, I subscribed to the Skeptical Inquirer. Such a sad magazine. After every issue I just felt sad.
I can very much understand your position, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have some experiences that were . . . profound.
Fair enough mate. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to have them in the future…I know I’ve grown to have a lot more respect for religion now the alternative is so horrifyingly clear.
Great blog, much appreciated.
Thank you! Enjoyed your comments!
Thank you so much for the Dad jokes. My 14 year old son is shaking his head in utter disbelief…job done!
Thank you!!!!!
It’s a specialty. Pugsley is very used to it.
“Take big bites.”
Moderation is for monks.
My early life involved taking lots of big bites. I seem to just nibble now. And split infinitives.
I need to find some big bites to take. Maybe that’s why I’m bored. You inspire me, Mr. Wilder.
Whenever I inspire, that gives me the biggest smile I’ll have all week.
Thank you, very much.