I know you’re really good at board games.  You’re real smart like that.  I was chuckling when you were recounting how you beat your dad in I can’t remember what game it was – Othello or backgammon.  I just recall it had black and white pieces.

I was a bit more erratic with board games.  I would do poorly or excel.  Usually, once I understood the rules, concepts, tactics, and strategy involved, I could hold my own.  It just took me some time.  In general, however, board games don’t appeal to me because I spent a good portion of my life having to solve problems at work and at home.

People are somewhat surprised when I tell them all that because they know I love strategy and practiced it on a relatively high level.  The difference between board game and real life strategy include the following:

1. Emotions

2. Not turn based

3. Fewer to no rules

4. The option not to move

5.  Non-static function and loyalty of pieces

6.  Time

7.  Gain and loss of assets

8.  Environment

I fought physically with mixed result but I fought primarily with my mind.  My first NYPD captain called me a mental warrior and my second said he would rather have me in a fight than the other senior lawyer in the unit who was an actual soldier.  A former colleague said I was a grandmaster in the way I defended the NYPD – methodical and organized.  She said that my opponents were playing checkers while I was playing 3D chess.  I replied  that I was playing Go, the game I feel most appropriates life.

There’s this great scene in Zhsng Yimou’s movie Hero where two warriors are fighting but the battle is played out in their minds.   The scene is set against the backdrop of a musician playing a song on an ancient stringed instrument as rain falls in a temple countryard.

Compelling and profound.

After the song abruptly ends after a string breaks on the instrument, the physicist component of the fight begins.  Unlike the mental battle, which is complex and lengthy, this is brief and simple.  The lesser warrior is cut down with a quick strike.

I think a lot of life works like that.

A substantial amount of mental even emotional work and preparation but the actual action of solution is quick.  My style and process was to spend a lot of time thinking and then acting.  It was thhs way with many things I did – casework, teaching, research, writing, naming the kids, faith, relationships, even healing,

And deciding to tell you how I felt.

That is not a game.