Reading The Royal Game

“I have always been interested in any kind of monomaniac obsessed by a single idea, for the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.” - Dr. B.

Book: The Royal Game, a.k.a. Chess Story, a.k.a. Chess, written by Stefan Zweig

If my memory doesn’t deceive me, this book was my first literary love when I was 15. To be more precise, it was Le Joueur d’Échecs, the french version. This book got half our grade playing chess during recess. I had even bought a small, pocket-sized, magnetic chessboard that we played on the school bus and in the amphitheatre during presentations.

I guess we saw it as a book centered around chess, but today, I don’t see it that way at all. This time, I wasn’t inspired to play chess at all.

I now see it as a book about the human mind. How the mind can be pushed into a corner of obsession over ideas; in this particular case, not to thrive, but to survive from boredom and isolation.

It shows how when the outer world shrinks, the inner world expands. Oftentimes beautifully and productively, and in the case of the story in the book, dangerously and uncontrollably.

But the story portrays an extreme scenario, so not to be worried about.

I think in today’s world filled with distractions and “social” media companies spending billions to design a system that keeps us hooked, we should embrace boredom.

We should see boredom and silence and quietness not as emptiness, but as space. A space in the physical realm, but also in the mental and spiritual.

Asentencewithnospaceishardertoread. Don’t see silence as a half empty cup. See it as half full.