Feb
1
Mood
Filed Under Life, Psychology | 1 Comment
After just narrowly losing a game of Go on the Internet, I felt angry. I had made a silly mistake mid game and paid the appropriate price. And I have lost a little too many games lately, so my ranking is sliding.
There are two contexts relating to this.
First, that I had decided in December to play games with a focus on my play rather than the result or ranking. I had played well apart from the one mistake, recovering to lose by only 3.5 points.
Second, that I realised that I was in a grumpy mood, and the game was merely an outlet for an expression of disgust with the World.
So I steppped back, averting a fit of pique at the very last moment, and pondered the situation. In the grand scheme of things, losing this game was near zero importance. Maybe if I was living in a war torn country, and the roof over my head had moments earlier collapsed, trapping me deep in rubble, my impending game defeat would have assumed a more appropriate perspective in my head.
When we do suffer something deeply, such as severe illness, and come out the other side, we are so happy to be buzzing with life that we vow never to get caught up by trivial matters. Yet how swiftly we get caught up the angst of tiny details. To keep your head above such details, and see them in the real context of life, such as the highly privileged one that we have in the UK, is remarkedly difficult.
The irony here is that in games of Go, you quickly learn to step above the details and see the whole picture. It is just that transferring that to real life, even the matter of losing a game of Go, is hard.
Feb
1
On average, I get 20 comments on my Blog each week. None ever appear in the Blog because WordPress requires comments to be approved.
Can anyone explain why spammers bother?