There was a time when I was serious about backgammon. Not great, but serious.<\/p>\n
At the serious-but-not-great level, backgammon is played with the reptile brain. For every situation, you learn and lock in a specific right response.<\/p>\n
Roll, move. Roll, move. Fast. Confident. You parry when you should parry, zip when you should zip. I played a fair amount that year. I was hitting my personal peak \u2019gammon, as it were. And then my dad came to visit.<\/p>\n
Growing up I had a terrible track record playing games with my dad. That sounds negative. Let me rephrase: my dad had a fantastic track record playing games with me. He played with a light engaged smile: cheerful, thoughtful, victorious.<\/p>\n
As we set up the board that day, I felt a little guilty. He hadn\u2019t played since he was a kid, growing up in Israel. I imagined him at age six, rolling heavy stone dice, sitting in some shady spot in the sands of the Negev. I was going head to head against my six-year-old dad and it didn’t quite seem fair.<\/p>\n
On his first roll, he went through every possible option. He chose the right one. I was impressed. I rolled, I moved. Boom.<\/p>\n
With his second turn, he took the same kind of excruciating approach, considering every imaginable option before making his selection.<\/p>\n
Then me: roll, move, boom.<\/p>\n
That was the rhythm of the game. He had none of the moves locked in, but he had crazy patience as he worked through a million scenarios. His moves were usually \u201cthe right ones,\u201d but every once in a while, he\u2019d make a surprising choice. I watched with horror.<\/p>\n
So I didn\u2019t win that game. Or the one after. We shook hands, put the board away, and turned our attention to lunch.<\/p>\n
What the hell had happened?<\/p>\n
Looking back, I think his triumph came down to three things: he was methodical, he was patient (did I mention he was patient?), and he was fully engaged. I was locked into my automatic moves. He was locked into the moment.<\/p>\n
I try to remember those games when I find myself getting into too much of a roll, move, boom state of mind.<\/p>\n
We often prize speed above all. And no doubt, the reptile brain has its place. It\u2019s the one I use, for example, when I\u2019m leaping from boulder to boulder, or evading lions. But now and then, in the rush of the day, it\u2019s great to take a breath and summon forth the awesome power of being a present, patient primate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was a time when I was serious about backgammon. Not great, but serious. At the serious-but-not-great level, backgammon is played with the reptile brain. For every situation, you learn and lock in a specific right response. Roll, move. Roll, move. Fast. Confident. You parry when you should parry, zip when you should zip. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-and-such"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}