Being Second Best
We are told it’s a good thing to tell others that they can achieve anything, that there are no limits. Not just to kids, even to adults. The Scottish chess Grand Master, Jonathan Rowson has an interesting take on that point in his book on life lessons from chess, The Moves that Matter . What if you try your best at something and yet can’t be the best at it? “Being inferior to someone at something you love despite your very best effort can be painful.” Almost unbelievably, he cites Viswanathan Anand as an example of this! For a few years now, Anand’s still a great player but nowhere as good as the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen (To be fair, nobody is anywhere as good as Carlsen for a few years now) . Now you might be thinking that’s just an inevitable decline (didn’t Karpov fade after Kasparov took over? Didn’t Steffi Graf begin to look second-best once Monica Seles’ reign began?). Aha, but Rowson’s point is different. When you read these lines, keep in ...