Alchemy

June 8

Let’s say you sit down to play a game of chess with a friend.

After briefly fiddling with the pieces—figuring out which is the rook, the bishop, the queen—the game begins, and the moves come easily. E4. E5. Develop the pieces. 

(The actual chess parts of this not mattering in the slightest)

Eventually, the moves begin to slow. What was once obvious becomes methodical, and the methodical becomes timid. You see a trap laid a few moves out—an advantage to be gained. You do your best to keep your composure, like a poker player looking down at pocket aces for the first time.

(a poker analogy probably doing no better than that of chess).

Before you can spring your trap, your friend gets up to use the restroom. You sit there brewing, waiting for them to come back and let your genius be realized.

But as you sit there, congratulating yourself on the genius of your assumptions, you catch the board from a different angle, and realize you’re about to lose the game.

In that span of time, those few brief moments, nothing changed. The pieces stayed the same. Your friend stayed the same. 

The only thing that changed was your perception of events—from inaccurate to slightly more accurate.

Moved from one state of being into another, in an instant, completely transforming reality. 

Alchemy.

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