Page 26 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

childhood eyes, those hazy first trees like a miracle after a long ocean crossing.
We didn’t talk about chess for weeks . We fi hed , dove in warm crystal-clear

water, trolled the Gulf Stream, br eathed in the beaut iful sout he rn air. I
rediscovered myself as a child, ran around the island with my friends Kier and
Kino, passed countless hours with my head hangi ng off our rickety old do ck,
hand line dangling in the water, watching the fi h dart around. On rainy

evenings, my mom and I would take our dog Browni e and go into the jungl e,
hunting for giant land crab. My family reconnect ed as human bei ngs , out side
of the mad swirl of scholastic chess. I was dev astated, but slowly my pa rent s
revived my boyish enthusiasm for life.

In painful times, my mom has always been an anch or, holdi ng everythi ng
together until the clouds roll by. When I was a chi ld, she woul d press he r soft
cheek against mine, reminding me that I didn’t always have to be so tough. I
didn’t have to tell her how I felt—she knew. My mother is the greatest pe rson I

have ever known. She is a brilliant, loving, compas sionat e woman with a
wisdom that to this day blows my mind. Qui etly po werful , in tely
supportive, absurdly selfless, she has always encour aged me to follow my he art
even when it led far away or to seemingl y bi zarre pur sui ts. She is also

incredibly brave (sometimes to my di smay), facing down four-hundred-pound
sharks in deep ocean, hand-lining leapi ng bl ue marlin, taming wild two-
thousand-pound stallions, breaking up street fight s, keepi ng my dad and me in
line. She has been a constant balancing force thr ougho ut all the madne ss of our

lives—lifting us when we were down, providi ng perspect ive when we go t too
swept away by ambition, giving a hug when tears flowed. My mom is my he ro.
Without her the whole thing falls apar t.
My father is a different type of character. He’s a loyal, emotional , eccent ric

(think Woody Allen meets Larry David with an adventur ous spi n) , de voted da d
who has been my best friend since day one. I can’t imagine ho w many ho ur s we
have spent together, playing bas ket bal l, thr owing around footba lls and
baseballs, scouring ocean horizons for bi rds above schooling fi h, traveling to

chess tournaments and then martial arts cham pi ons hi ps all over the world. We
have been an elite team since I was six years old and subs equen tly ha ve be en
joined at the hip in our ambitions and, to a certain extent, our emotions . No
matter how much perspective we tried to maintain, our senses of well-be ing

often fluctuated with my competitive resul ts. Ther e was no way around thi s.