Page 61 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

This was an intense, formative period of my life. As I matur ed int o a
nineteen- and twenty-year-old young man, my relations hi p to che ss was

infused with a more sophisticated cons cious nes s. I was no longer soaring with
the momentum of my early career. Now I had my demons to wrestle with. Self-
doubt and alienation were part of my reality, but in Europe I was free of the
immense pressures of my celebrity back ho me.

I studied chess and literature and traveled the world with my notebo ok and
a rucksack. My home base was a little village called Vrho lvje, nestled in the
mountains of southern Slovenia and overlooki ng no rther n Italy. I lived
romantically, took long walks in the woods , and dove deeper and de epe r int o

chess, sifting through the hidden nuan ces of nine rounds I had jus t pl ayed
against Grandmasters in Amsterdam, Crete, or Budap est. Then , after pe riods of
intense work, I would take off for ano ther big tour nam ent in some faraway
place.

During these years I discovered a po werful new private relations hi p to che ss.
I worked on the game tirelessly, but was no w moved less by ambi tion tha n by a
yearning for self-discovery. While my under standi ng of the gam e de epe ne d, I
continued to be uneven and, at times, self-def eating in compet ition. I was

consistently unhappy before leaving for tour nam ents, preferring my lifestyle of
introspection and young romance. When I dr agged myself off to tour na ment s,
some days I would play brilliant chess and other s I woul d feel di sconne cted,
like a poet without his muse. In order to make my new kno wledge mani fest

over the board, I had to figure out ho w to release myself from the ba gga ge I
had acquired, and I developed a metho d of study that made ches s and life be gi n
to merge in my being.
At this point in my career, despite my issues , I was still a strong che ss

player competing against world- class rivals. Each tour nam ent ga me was
riddled with intricate complications and hour upo n hour of mount ing tens ion.
My opponents and I created increasingl y subt le pr obl ems for the othe r to solve,
building the pressure in the position unt il the chessboard and the mind itself

felt like a fault line, trembling, on the verge of expl osion. Sometimes techni cal
superiority proved decisive, but more often somebody cracked , as if a tiny
weakness deep in the being suddenl y erupt ed ont o the b oard.
These moments, where the techni cal and ps ychologi cal collide, are whe re I

directed my study of the game. In the cour se of a nine- round ches s tour na ment ,
I’d arrive at around four or five critical po sitions that I di dn’t qui te unde rstand