Charting My Own Course
I’ve been comfortable zagging while others are zigging since I was little. It started on father-son trips to Nashville. My dad and I would go to our favorite restaurant, Mission BBQ, and without fail, on our way there, Dad would turn left. I would gently tug at his hand to turn right.
“George, let’s go; it’s this way.”
“Um, no, dad, it’s not.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Turning right would lead us a little while later to a delicious plate of hot brisket. On those and other trips, I got used to walking in the opposite direction and became the family navigator. My dad’s notoriously bad sense of direction gave me the confidence to follow my own compass. I learned to stand my ground and got used to charting my own path in other ways.
I was eight when I started playing chess. For a beginner, it is a rigid game with little room for flexibility. You have to play standard openings to win. But I was a tinkerer. I decided to create my own variations to catch my opponents off guard. I created seven variations for the Fried Liver, three for the Smith-Morra, and five for the Caro-Kann. Luckily, I had a chess coach, Miron, who understood who I was and encouraged me to keep exploring new lines, even if I lost games I could have won. He helped develop my thinking. I learned to be strategic, finding new advantages and not experimenting for experiment’s sake. I was able to win against players who were rated much higher than I and placed in the top three in a national tournament. Eventually, I came to appreciate chess as a forum to test my ideas and creativity.
Charting my own course has allowed me to pursue the unexpected without worrying about outcomes. My best friend, Sid, thought I was crazy when I announced eight months before tryouts that I wanted to make the JV squash team. He was on varsity, and I had never played before. When I first tried squash, though, I immediately fell in love: the structured confines of the court, the unpredictable speed of the ball, the frenetic pace of play. That fall and spring, if you wanted to find me, I was on the squash courts. Tryouts came in December. Using what Miron taught me, I watched my competitors to determine their weak spots. I practiced, played and practiced more. In the end, it wasn’t pretty. It came down to the last game of the three-week tryout. When I heard the ball bounce twice, I cried like I’d won the gold medal. The last spot on the team was mine.
In the classroom, my navigation has meant promoting intellectual discourse. In history class, we were asked to debate Andrew Jackson’s removal from the twenty-dollar bill. I was the only one willing to argue against 12 classmates. Was I against his removal? Not necessarily but I wanted to have an open and rigorous debate before rushing to the mainstream view. If Jackson is removed, were his transgressions greater than Washington’s or Jefferson’s, both of whom have had compromised histories but played important roles in our country’s evolution? Ultimately, the majority view didn’t change, but we engaged in a healthy debate that considered both changing and creating different denominations of bills. In a country that’s already so polarized, I believe it’s important to comprehend the dichotomies and examine an issue from a diverse set of perspectives. I’m willing to be uncomfortable to promote a constructive dialogue, and I’ve come to view my role in class as difficult, necessary, and, hopefully, useful.
Zagging while others are zigging isn’t about arguing for argument’s sake; it’s about inquiry, conviction and hope. My own compass might not lead us to true north, but I’d like to talk while we find our way there.