Lecture à la fois amusante et inspirante ce matin:
Your Life is Tetris. Stop Playing It Like Chess | Tor Blair
L’auteur compare le jeu d’échec au jeu de Tetris, et suggère qu’il est préférable d’aborder la vie comme le second.
Au sujet des échecs:
Chess wired me to think causally at a young age. Move your knight here; you’ll trap his bishop. Capture that pawn; you’ll weaken his right side. Every correct move led me closer to a checkmate; every false step brought me closer to defeat.
Chess also introduced the idea of the “other”. Black versus white. Our school versus theirs. And every game was zero sum — there was only ever one point to score, either to be shared or taken in its entirety. No way to grow the pie. (…)
Au sujet de Tetris:
In Tetris, you’re only playing against time and the never-ending flow of pieces from top to bottom. The mindset is internally focused — you are challenging yourself to correctly manipulate a random stream of inputs into an orderly configuration. There’s no final boss. No blame to assign.
Sur l’attitude à avoir devant les événements qui composent notre vie:
I spent much of my life in that chess mindset trying to find the best possible play or force my way toward a predetermined conclusion. I was hard-wired to see causality all around me and to seek control.
But real life isn’t causal. There is always a distribution of possible events. Things happen that are one in a billion. There is no direct, predictable response to our actions. Our lives are open systems, where any number of unobservable events can change our outlooks and perspectives in moments.
Ce que Tor Blair propose donc de retenir de la comparaison c’est que dans la vie, comme dans Tetris:
- notre principal adversaire, c’est nous-même;
- les choses ne sont pas de plus en plus dures, elles se déroulent seulement de plus en plus vite;
- on ne peut jamais tout contrôler;
- personne ne nous dira jamais quand on a gagné.
Il y aurait évidemment bien des nuances à apporter à tout ça — mais pour un dimanche matin, d’un mois où j’explore un quotidien moins prévisible qu’il a pu l’être dans les dernières années, j’ai trouvé ça stimulant.
«The only way to master life — like Tetris — is to learn to play with the same self-control at the highest speeds. You can’t allow your goals to be compromised, no matter the pace at which you move. You must control your own mind, your own behaviors, and your own time.»
Alors, comment ne pas terminer sur cette touche musicale, inoubliable:
Jeux de mots et d’images 