Chess and Critical Creativity

The Power of Positivity

How do you learn to learn?

It starts with mindfulness. . .

Learning to Learn: Growing Up Fast

My father was not the smartest, for he never graduated from high school and entered the military, but he ended up fixing electronic equipment which isn’t easy, but his weakest characteristic was his inability to be compassionate, for he lovingly beat me daily, and forcing me to smile as he hit me violently, asking for forgiveness, so what might my crime be at that moment: perhaps picking up a piece of candy that I dropped to the ground and putting it into my mouth, forgetting to see if the demon father was looking, and if he was, then I became dead meat.

My dad would then shout at me in a questioning tone, “What did I tell you ‘BOY,” never pick up something from the floor and eat it, come here; then he would slap me across the face, but that wasn’t the end, he might tell me to take my clothes off as he began a series of tortures and painful assaults to my body, always as I thanked him for being so kind and so loving, as I told him how much I loved him and as I told him he was so wonderful.

If I cried, looked sad, or, heaven help me, looked angry, he would then kill me, nail me to a cross, and when I resurrected from the dead, the beatings would only begin again, this time with his leather belt; I think he meant well because he was bullied, beat up, and left for dead, more than once in the slums where he was raised, as I experienced the same because we were poor and lived in the worst places.

The Mind Games of Chess Playing

My father told me to read, my father told me to do well in school, and my father told me to learn chess; hell, he would teach me, and he would yell at me for forgetting the rules, so day by day, night by night, and move by move, we played chess; so month by month, and year by year, he joyfully defeated me, laughing, and calling me stupid, idiot, and worthless; the same things he told me as he joyfully beat me daily.

Finally Learning to Learn: Checkmate

However, one day he made a mistake, as I captured his queen and within just a few moves, I said, “Checkmate.”

I thought my father would be proud that I finally beat him, for the first time as I heard him say something positive to me in a low voice, shocked: . . . v. . .v. . .very good. . .; quickly, he walked out of the room, depressed, confused, and sad, for he never again would play chess with me.

At school, I became a chess champion, for no one could ever beat me, and on the streets of Los Angeles, I became a street fighting champion, for no one ever defeated me in a real fight since I knew pain from the loving fists of fury from my father; indeed, my fight club became legendary as other teenagers came to challenge me, mostly Asian ones, themselves karate masters, who grew up fighting on the streets and had black belts, and probably a similar father to mine, for my father, a black belt, taught me to fight also in the same manner by delivering painful blow after blow, which became his symbolic forms of loveless and lifeless love.

Thank you for reading this. . .

I am crying, writing this: at the age of seventeen, I left home, found a low paying job, took care of myself, and rarely visited my father; indeed, after my mother died of cancer in her mid fifties, I never visited my father ever as he lived some 20 years more, finally dying of lung cancer, and my last memory was seeing my father in the kitchen when he dropped some food onto the floor, seeing me watching him, picking it up and smiling at me as he chewed it slowly; however, I didn’t smile back, because I never ever returned to spend any time with my loser subhuman father after that day.

When I had a family, I treated my kids with love and tenderness, for they loved to play chess with me and loved to do math and learn science, both are doing well in life, and I am proud of them, as they call me, lovingly to this day: PAPA!

I never attended the funeral of my father, but I forgive him even though I can never forget the hell he made of my golden childhood years of dreadful pain.

My greatest joyful moment in my childhood was the day I beat my father in chess.

I think I wrote a version of this before, so I hope you had a father whom you loved, and let me know.

🚀 Being a cancer survivor twice

🚀 BLESSINGS TO YOU! 🚀