Page 57 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

I can see her now, standing with her back to the traffic on 33r d and
Broadway, screaming at the now-di stant bi ker who had jus t pe rformed a

miracle to avoid smashing into her. The image is frozen in my mind. A taxicab
was the next to speed around the corner. The woman was struck from be hi nd
and sent reeling ten feet into the air. She smashed into a lamppo st and was
knocked out and bleeding badly. The ambul ance and po lice came and

eventually I moved on to P.S. 1 16, ho pi ng t hat she w oul d s ur vive.
As I walked into the school, dumbs truck by the severity of what I ha d jus t
witnessed, I felt compelled to share a version of the story with my stude nt s. I
left out the gravity of her injuries but I linked life and chess in a way tha t

appeared to move them—this tragedy needn’ t hav e happen ed. I expl aine d ho w
this woman’s first mistake was looki ng the wrong way and steppi ng int o the
street in front of traffic. Maybe wearing headpho nes put her in her own world,
a little removed from the immediacy of the moment. Then the bi ke r sho ul d

have been a wake-up call. She wasn’t hur t, but instead of reacting with
alertness, she was spooked into anger, irritated that her qui et ha d be en
shattered. Her reaction was a perfect par allel to the ches s pl ayer’s do wnw ard
spiral—after making an error, it is so easy to cling to the emotiona l comfort

zone of what was, but there is also that uns ettling sense that thi ngs ha ve
changed for the worse. The clear thinker is suddenly at war with himself and
flow is lost. I have always visualized two lines moving parallel to one ano the r in
space. One line is time, the other is our per cept ion of the moment. I sho wed

my students these lines with my han ds , moving thr ough the air. Whe n we are
present to what is, we are right up front with the expan sion of time, but whe n
we make a mistake and get frozen in what was, a layer of det achm ent bui lds .
Time goes on and we stop. Suddenl y we are living, pl aying chess, crossing the

street with our eyes closed in memory. And then comes the taxicab. Tha t che ss
lesson was surely the most emotional I’ve ever taught .
Three years later, my students and I traveled to the National Cham pi ons hi ps
in Knoxville, Tennessee. The kids were no w in fifth grade and one of the

strongest teams in the country. In the final round of the tour nam ent , we were
tied for first place. I waited outside the tour nam ent room with the pa rent s of
my kids. I always felt strange at a bi g gam e if I wasn’t the one compe ting, but
after years of teaching children and watching them gr ow int o dy na mic

competitors, it felt especially harrowing to sit and wait for the verdi ct. Suc h