On Failing Toward Greatness
I’ve been playing chess every day for 15 years. I’ve known how to play since childhood and even won my school’s chess tournament in the third grade. (Oh, my ... please save your applause for the end of the essay. You’re making me blush!) My chess.com profile informs me that I joined the site on February 17, 2010 and further informs me that I have since played 5,026 games, solved 1,971 puzzles, and completed 104 lessons. I’ve read a handful of chess books, watched untold hours of chess videos on YouTube, and played several in-person games that chess.com can’t account for. 5,195 days have passed since I joined chess.com, meaning I’ve averaged about one game per day for 15 years, not to mention all the study and practice.
Over that time, my chess rating has risen from 935 to my recent record of 1566. I currently float in the high 1400 to mid 1500s, placing me in about the 95-97th percentile among the 73 million players active on chess.com. In the past fifteen years, my rating has grown by 631 points. If a random person walks in off the street to play me (which happens more often than you might think), I’ll almost always demolish them.
And yet—if I were to take the 631 points I’ve grown over the past 15 years and add it to my best rating of 1566, that would put me at 2197. To become a “grandmaster,” one must reach a rating of 2500, so add another 303 points. Magnus Carlsen, the world champion and arguably greatest player of all time, is currently sitting at 3215 on chess.com. That’s 715 higher than the minimum grandmaster, and 715 is more than the difference between where I am now and where I was when I started. The difference between me and the minimum grandmaster is even more: 934. Ouch.
I’ve often fallen prey to this tendency to think, “I’ve worked hard at this, and I have plenty of natural talent, so I could go toe-to-toe with pretty much anyone.” As often as I’ve put this myth to the test, I’ve discovered just how mythical it is. I showed up to college track thinking I was hot stuff and got quite a wake-up call when everyone around me was just as fast or—more often—much, much faster. I showed up to law school thinking I was the smartest guy in every room, only to discover that I was often the dumbest. By the start of each class, my peers had typically read and understood drastically more than I had. Time after time, I learn the humiliating way that I have lots of catching up to do.
Much like chess, I’ve been writing since childhood; but during college, I began studying and practicing the craft in earnest. 15 years later, what I have to show for it are some decent published books, perhaps better than what your average Joe off the street might write, and a couple of “honorable mentions” in Writers of the Future, which places me in about the 90th percentile of the contest. Sometimes, I get the wild notion that I’ve written something truly brilliant and groundbreaking, just like I sometimes used to think I’d run at truly world-class speeds or played a truly genius game of chess.
It’s a good feeling, that sense of progress, that thrilling moment when you break into new territory and do something you couldn’t have done before; and those moments should be celebrated. After all, we weren’t made to be stagnant, and growth is often its own reward. It’s even better when such moments are celebrated with humility. If I can ever reach the halfway point between where I am on chess.com (1566) and where Magnus is (3215), I will be at 2390, i.e., the top 0.01 percent. It would take years of intensive work to get that far, yet I would still be a long way from grandmaster, and there would still be around 7,000 players ranked higher than me.
Pick a skill, and you’ll see the same pattern. Have you read lots of books? I know people who read 500 per year. “Oh, sure,” you say, “but not the deep and meaningful ones. They’re probably just reading fluff.” Perhaps sometimes, but in many cases, this assumption is flat wrong. Teddy Roosevelt read a whole book before breakfast every morning, many of them classics, and memorized every word. But we don’t need Teddy to make the point. We can just check with your average Oxford professor and see how your reading compares with his. If you’ve read more than 97 percent of people, you might have read half as much as the least educated Oxford professor—but I doubt it. Such is the bell curve.
You may be wondering what’s the point of all this. Am I trying to destroy your dreams of greatness? Certainly not! To destroy your dreams is to destroy mine, for I live constrained by the same harsh realities. Only, I find it exciting. No matter how far I’ve made it, I still haven’t reached the “top.” There’s always more to learn, more to become, and the thought of it thrills me. I join the Narnian cry, “Onward and upward!”
As for the point, it’s twofold. The first point is humility, but not a cynical, self-defeated humility. In fact, those who fail to realize the steepness of the road ahead are often the ones defeating themselves, hamstrung by their own egos. For instance, how many “pretty good” writers are out there thinking they’re the next Shakespeare, and because they have such a high view of themselves, they never look up to see how much farther they have to go before they’ve even caught up with the average professional writer? For these egoists, when someone doesn’t enjoy their work or sees problems with it, they think, “These dimwits just don’t understand my brilliance,” then feel like perfect martyrs when they go unnoticed. That’s a broad road, and millions go down it. Humility is the cure.
The second point is more philosophical. Before you begin doing something like running or writing or playing chess, it wouldn’t hurt to know why you’re doing it so you can set your habits and expectations accordingly. So, let’s unpack those terms: habits and expectations.
Habits matter because you won’t make progress toward the summit of any serious mountain without the right habits. I live within eyeshot of Mount Rainier, and every year people try to reach her summit. Around half make it, and many have died trying. One could get pretty far up Rainier in shorts and sandals and carrying no more than a walking stick, but if they tried to reach the summit that way, they would never get anywhere close. The mountain is around 14,400 feet tall, and it takes serious preparation and specialized gear to proceed beyond around 10,000. With a great deal of natural athleticism and idiocy, you might short-and-sandal your way to 11,000 feet or so before failing, but it would be a devastating if not deadly effort, and you’d certainly never make the summit.
Whatever the mountain is—chess, writing, sports—this pattern holds. You might, for instance, be a naturally gifted writer, but if you don’t do the strenuous “deliberate practice” it takes to elevate a skill to higher places, you’ll more likely win the lottery than be paid even a minimum living wage for your writing. Millions are trying to make it as writers, and simply writing a bunch of half-decent work in hopes that some new iteration of it will eventually catch on won’t get you there. Deliberate practice involves a rigorous regimen of study, practice, and feedback, and good luck with the method that so many attempt: holding up all their writing hopes on a one-legged “practice” stool. It won’t work. You need the study and feedback too. Everyone does. Stop trying to climb Rainier in sandals.
My chess “career” is an excellent example of this. Chess is not a cornerstone of my life’s mission, so my chess habits involve some unfocused study and playing for fun. That’s why after 15 years of daily chess, I’m still only a decent player. Such hobbyist-style effort will not get you into the higher echelons of any serious skill. I like the idea of being a grandmaster in the same way I like the idea of someone offering me a million dollars because I’m just such a swell guy—as in, it’s a lovely thought, and I’m not banking on it.
Writing, on the other hand, is central to my life’s mission. I’ve experienced how profoundly a person can be changed by reading the right words at the right time, and I firmly believe it is part of my Christian calling to pay that forward. So, I write daily, study the craft, read classics, and seek feedback on my work. My law career is very writing-intensive, and in the legal community, I welcome all opportunities to write and edit additional motions and articles. Every book I read, show I watch, and video game I play, I’m mining for information relevant to the craft. Even my hobbies are aimed in that direction, chess foremost among them since chess is shown to boost the brain’s executive function and creativity, both of which are useful for writers. But again, I’m not pursuing greatness in chess. In writing, I am.
This leads to the second term we’ll unpack: expectations—and one who expects to be among the world’s great writers is setting the stage for colossal disappointment. One of my favorite Bible verses, from the book of Ecclesiastes, sums it up nicely: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, but time and chance happen to them all.” There you have it—work hard, put your innate resources to good use, and maybe you’ll get lucky. So encouraging!
Only, didn’t I just say I’m pursuing greatness as a writer? Yes, and I stand by that. Writing is central to my mission, and I will become the greatest writer that I can. I will grit my teeth and fight with all my strength to get there. At the same time, I will acknowledge that certain Magnus Carlsens in the literary world could write better in their twenties than I ever will. Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights at age 29, and I sometimes wonder if anyone will ever write a more brilliant story. As far as I’m concerned, the poetic brilliance of Wuthering Heights is the pinnacle of the writing mountain. Others disagree, and that’s fine. Put Anna Karenina or Lord of the Rings or whatever else up there. The fact remains that I find myself amidst the millions bloodying their fingers to claw higher up the writing mountain, and the vast bulk of us won’t get anywhere near the top. That’s fine too.
But why is it fine? For me, it’s fine because there’s so little within my control. I don’t even control whether I’ll survive today’s commute home, much less whether, in some distant year, my books will have reached the masses. If my mission were self-centered, perhaps I would be devastated by the vast uncertainty of it all. Perhaps I would cry what the Ecclesiastes writer began his book with: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”
When my writing life backslides into the ambitious desire for fame and fortune, the task indeed seems a pointless waste of time. But when I consider the genuine heart of the mission—to encourage and enlighten my readers, however few—then the task becomes not merely tolerable but joyful. The One I work for is perfectly capable of shepherding the outcome of my work, so I don’t have to worry about it. The One who put the breath in my lungs is the One who put all these ideas in my head, and He’s asked me to share them. So, I will. If there’s someone He wants my words to reach, my words will reach them. If not, what good comes of worrying over what I can’t control? Anyhow, what’s so special about me that I should be the one to make a name for myself? Others have been smarter and worked hard and loved better—so, why not them? God knows. I’ll just have to do what He’s asked and trust Him with the outcome.
We start life surrounded by mountains, and some are worth climbing. Some, we’re uniquely tailored to climb. Whatever the mountain you pursue, it’s not a bad idea to ask yourself why you’ve chosen it. After all, the journey will take years, it will strain you, and the odds of getting anywhere near the summit are dreadfully small. Time and chance will have their way. Can you live with that? Can you live with climbing for a good reason, seeing the way to the top, and yet knowing you’ll likely never get there? If not, what will you do instead—and why? Your hours have to be spent somewhere. Where will yours go?
These questions are worth asking, for beneath them, you may just find the answers that define your entire life. If so—if I’ve helped you in some small way toward realizing your mission—then I will call this another successful day of writing. And for me, that is enough. Onward and upward.
