Yet Untitled 034 - Chess, Cards and Math Class
Label ripping and rebranding to face challenges
Greetings Dear Yet Untitler,
A challenge approaches. And I’m a bit intimidated! I don’t want to simply feel intimidated and leave it at that, I want to do something about it. So, all this week, I’ve been thinking about other stuff that intimidates me and see if I can find some antidotes.
All my life, chess has intimidated me. As have card games.
But before all these, mathematics intimidated me.
I have been thinking about chess, card games and math, wondering why 😫. After a point, I felt on the verge of a revelation. Going deeper into my reluctance to look Math in the face, I realised a few things…
…before math, math class intimidated me.
A Story about Math Class
I was called to the greenboard to solve a math problem. I was 13. My teacher was impatient. The whole class was watching me. They were bored and my situation gave them some mild entertainment. I was aware of those in the class who had already solved the problem in their head three times over.
“Slow.”
My teacher uttered this as if he was gently passing judgment on my entire life. He was bored. Perhaps he was too lazy to teach. Pronouncing judgment definitely took less energy. Little did he know that he was stamping “slow at math” on my forehead in near indelible ink, starting a long period of my intimidation with the subject.
My teacher’s judgment always revisited me at the wrong times - like when I’d be asked to calculate the bill split at a restaurant. It made me want to shout “of course I can’t do it, I’m slow.” Ugh.
This math teacher in question was short. I relished it when someone would place the chalkboard duster on the top edge of the green board and he had to jump like an excited poodle to retrieve it.
As I write this I realise that I have unresolved issues with respect to math class. I really do.
Chess? Card Games?
Diwali approaches and ‘tis the season for cards.
I run the other way.
If Diwali had been about chess (what a strange notion!) I would have run the other way too.
Now I realise that it’s because of this impression I’ve emblazoned on my brain - of being slow. Strategy and calculation freaks me out. I believe I’m no good at it, so rather than be in situations where I could fail - I run.
This ain’t good. I do not want to run. I find it…unbecoming.
Spreadsheets showed me otherwise
Imagine!
Some years ago, I agreed to take on a very administrative, number-crunching task in my Buddhist organisation. I would have never taken it on, had it not been for a deep seated perspective within the organisation to encourage its members to take up those very things that scare them!
You’d think they the last thing a Buddhist comrade would want to do is torture a fellow comrade. I still examined this impulse to suggest the more difficult road and concluded this: It’s about changing Karma. According to the law of karma, programming hidden deep in our lives decides how we respond to circumstances. This deep programming is referred to as Karma, and is a function of our accumulation of deeds. Our discomfort is a good identifier of our problematic karma - the very stuff that needs weeding out. This was the thinking behind the benevolent smiles of my lovely Buddhist friends when they saw my guttural negation of the spreadsheet that lay before me. They reassured me that this will only lead to good.
They were right.
After a few weeks, my apprehensions against numbers and calculation diminished considerable. I found myself bolder when it came to mental number processing. It’s not like I suddenly became Rain Man - I made mistakes, sure, but this didn’t paralyse me now like it did before.
It even made me believe that I could get there - to this non suffering place - with card games and chess as well! Hallelujah!
PS. Check out the trailer to this film about gender equality in schools I once made, with chess as the main theme. At the back of my mind, this was me facing a personal demon.
Ripping out the labels
“Slow” isn’t my only label. I have a few more:
That I’m a baby - yup, believe it. I’m 42 now, and while they may not say it, many of my elders still apply this label to me. Thinking about it, I wonder - do they feel safe looking at me this way, as a ‘baby’? Does looking at me as an adult open some can ‘o worms that they’d rather not deal with? As for myself - I admit it feels safe thinking of myself as the young ‘un. Often, it shields me from responsibility. It should not be this way.
That I get ‘hangry’ - many of my friends have favourite stories about how I’ve become a raging, sulking green imp when deprived of food. It’s physiology. If I don’t serve feed my particular animal form, it retaliated. But, over the years and over many Hangry episodes, I have learned to contain it. I eat multiple small meals a day. My day pack always has a snack. But the label lingers. Those who claim to have seen me hangry are stuck in another time, but they are continually looking to reconfirm the label for it to stick. I wonder why. It’s entertaining - I give them that! But I wonder what it is about labels that allows them to stick far far beyond their welcome.
That I’m careless - which I am. I’ve booked Delhi-Mumbai flights when I needed to fly Mumbai-Delhi. I’ve sent dozens of faux-pas messages to the wrong people. If I don’t challenge this with daily redeterminations - I could get myself into all kinds of messes. I’m glad this label’s around for now. I need reminders about being carefu!
I conclude this: there’s safety in definition. There’s familiarity. Both for ourselves and others. Change seems to be one of the most difficult things for people, which flummoxes me because it’s the one thing that’s happening all the time.’
Speaking of definitions…
One of my daughters - Aahana - does not want to grow up. She has a vehement attachment to being referred to as a baby. She doesn’t like being told that at eight, she isn’t one anymore.
I’ve thought much about her attachment to this label. I can understand that she likes to keep it because it’s familiar. It’s safe.
I can understand that change can overwhelm.
The Vasant who’s feeling intimidated by the upcoming challenge is fearing change. This statement rings truer after the current investigation. There is likely a label in operation - a label I’ve likely given myself. Like Aahana, I feel safe in it. Shade is comforting, who wants to step out if it into the harsh sunlight?
But would I ask Aahana not to grow? I cannot! Her self-applied label as a baby is limiting. So is mine.
Given that everything, including ourselves, is in a constant state of flux - what use it a label except as signage of inertia. Or lazy thinking.
Pah! Down with labels!
Rebranding!
Dearest Yet Untitler. I thank you once again.
Because of your ready ear, I have excavated my way to reassessing my response to my upcoming challenge. It’s going to need some rebranding.
And the only person who can do it is me.
‘Slow’ was definitely a limiting label. For so many years, it kept my own capabilities hidden for me, and made me suffer with fear in countless everyday situations.
But who inflicted this upon me? My poor, hopping math teacher? A few paragraphs above, I wrote this:
“Now I realise that all this aversion and running is because of an impression I’ve emblazoned on my brain - of being slow.”
In this sentence itself, it is I, not my math teacher, who’s holding the branding iron, doing the emblazoning!
I relook at this memory afresh - suddenly, I see my acceptance of the label as key, not the imposition of it by my teacher.
Everything is suddenly different.
Suddenly, it feels like I’m rewriting my past and my future. Suddenly, I’m a curious person inside my own life with new tools that can change how I see things. I feel brave. I feel like the protagonist of my life rather than a bystander. I own the misstep as my own and I also own the reparation.
I like this better. Much better. And so does ol’ Leonard:
Simultaneously, past, present and future reconfigure themselves and in a single moment there is a lifetime’s worth of forgiveness and bucketloads of new courage that feels like it was always there for the taking.
Here’s where I land: whatever I’ve told myself that’s having me balk at what’s coming - even if based on some truth - I now see that it’s only one possibility. There are more versions of me contained in my life. With a little bit of encouragement, a little help from my friends, I can find that guy inside me who’ll get to work and won’t be intimidated for long.
Dear Yet Untitler.
The friend I talk about about is you (collective)! You don’t know how much you do for my by just listening.
I wish you a bright and illuminating Diwali!
PS:
Do you feel trapped by a label someone had given you, or you have given yourself?
Tell me! I want to know!