If you want a good investment tip, you should buy into
whoever makes the plastic zippy ties. I seem to be favoring them as the perfect
solution for every modification problem on the eZip and am about to
singlehandedly support an entire factory the way I am going. I fixed the
problem with the stability of the foot pegs by zippy tying two butter knives (that
were zippy tied together) to the underneath and the frame. I fixed the battery
attachment issue by zippy tying the whole darn thing together and I would have
zippy tied the whole new electrical harness modification except all the splices
had to be soldered.
You see, I do have restraint.
Or, I should say, I have developed restraint. Except I am
not sure if that is the right term for what has been happening. Yes, I have
learned the value of reading manuals before I try to put something together.
Yes, I have learned that waiting before jumping on the latest idea tends to
weed out the flash in the pan distractions better. And, yes, I have learned the
value of the 5 year plan but I am not sure if that is restraint and discipline
so much as it is that I have finally discovered what curiosity is.
I had always thought that curiosity was something that came
naturally to children and then was one of those things that you struggle to
regain in your adult life. Now, I am beginning to understand that what children
have is definitely curiosity with a small ‘c.’ There is some thing else more
complex which can best be described as curiosity with a capital “C.”
The difference boils down to how the question is phrased, or
more than one gains another question. The original question of curiosity is “What
does this do? What is this?” transforms into “What does this do and if certain things
change, does it do the same and how then does the world react to it?” It is a
matter of accountability, of recognition that cause and effect is not limited
to our sphere of influence and acknowledgement but can be far broader reaching.
That is something that a child does not have, a contextual grasp that they are
not the center of the universe.
I think a part of the reason I have begun to develop this
has been by growing involvement with the game
GO (iGO, Wei Qi, Baduk). It
started out innocently enough. My parents gave us a game when I was about 6.
More accurately, they gave my eldest brother the game and none of us could
figure it out. It was the Milton Bradley classic games version with the
unbelievably obtuse directions. We never played it. I think I remember my
brother playing it once and then never saw it again.
The game has followed me through my life, popping up in odd
places. I missed an opportunity to connect to it when I lived in Korea, but
there were plenty of reasons for that.
Then, later in life, it landed square in my lap. Very
deliberately. I walked in a Korean market, saw a set and it bit me like a bug.
Since then I have been learning and playing and teaching the game to anyone who
pauses. I use it in the Responsive Wellness Program at
MHCA/OASIS and have
written about the clinical studies of its effectiveness in
stopping, reversingand preventing dementia as well as combating depression, anxiety and a host of
cognitive disorders.
Underneath all of that, is the peculiar hold the game can
take on you. People who I teach (and sometimes force to play the game as part
of their classes) hate it, then after not playing it for a while, when they see
someone playing – they realize they miss it. It provides a strange level or
wordless communication between you and another, and between you and your soul.
Game play truly does reveal the nature of your soul and as
the Buddhist’s say, it is the only chance you have to pierce the veils of
ignorance.
I love those sayings about the game, but it is only recently
that I have begun to understand and experience what they mean.
In taking an intensive workshop with
Guo Juan through her InternetGO School, I am experiencing the phenomenon of losing constantly, badly, disastrously
and embarrassingly while simultaneously am congratulated by the highly skilled
and professional players I know at this breakthrough. You see, in GO, a good
beginner plays to lose because you cannot fool yourself into thinking you are
skilled enough to win. If you do, and you lose, you will build resentment and
reject the game. If you know that chances of you winning that game against a
highly skilled player are slim, you are free to be present and learn from the
game.
They say when you are learning the most you win the least
because you begin to recognize the hidden patterns of weakness and self defeat
that color your play. That is the stage I am in and it has its equivalent
metaphor in life as well. I am frustrated at times by what I see happening on
the board and recognizing its connections to patterns in the rest of my life,
but through board play, I am beginning to untangle the wrong views that lead to
disaster in both.
I have begun to study the art of curiosity in earnest. One
of the things I have begun to get curious about is my own internal reactions
and my external role in the world. The difference is, I do not immediately run
from those questions into answers (that you know aren’t right) to evade the
pain and suffering of not knowing. One of the people who sees me for sutra
study brought up a recent bout of insomnia. For once, they decided rather than
try to fix it, they would be curious about why – at the age of 78, they would
suddenly have days of sleeplessness, and they realized it was because of
anxiety and fear of death. Not of death, but of the thought of their death.
So they sat with it. Contemplated it. Brought it to me and
we played a game in which one side was death and the other life in highly
personal terms. Through that play they discovered it wasn’t their death that
they feared, but the initial thought. When they got past that first rejected
thought, something amazing happened. Suddenly, they felt renewed joy and a
drive to be creative in life as it was left to them. Not to create something to
outlast them, but from a sheer sense of curiosity about all the things in the
world they didn’t know and somehow, forgot to be interest in as an adult.
As they put it,
“I saw an ad that featured a 20 something year old with
dangling earrings, streaks of color in her hair and jewels glued to her cheek.
I but out the picture, framed it and carefully pasted my face over hers. I
would wear jewels on my skin now again, because I know there are endless
possibilities in life, even though mine will be short lived and are limited.”
The Buddha said it is only through mindfulness of the body
that we shall discover what it means to love.
To play GO with the rules of life, one will always both lose
and win in the end. This is why it can be so addictive for so many. It provides
a sense of reality in a life that has become defined by anything but the real.
If you ever want to play, find me on
Nova,
DragonGO,
KGS or
IGS as some variation of ctribe.
I would love to lose to you J
