Lesson Learned Playing Chess with Relationships

My grandson and his family will be visiting soon.  He is five now, starting kindergarten.  My thoughts have been racked as to what special activity, just he and I might participate in, without the girls. Searching my “child memories file,” I remember my only living grandfather, affectionately, patiently, but sternly teaching me to play chess.  As I ponder, I realize I was a little older, probably in the fourth or fifth  grade, with the calculation that ever hoping to win at the game was not going to be easy.  I soon concluded that Braydon is a little young to appreciate the game, especially the  strategies.  Strategies, such as, castling, prophylaxis, solus rex, triangulation and zugzwang, among others.  So, I’ll take him to my woodworking shop and we will create, together a treasure box.

I did not learn to love the game of chess.  I suppose that’s probably why I haven’t played the game for twenty years or more.  But I did learn how to play and the terminology that goes along with it. Triangulation, for instance, is a tactic used in chess endgames to put one's opponent in zugzwang, a German word for "compulsion to move." Triangulation occurs when one king can move between three adjoining squares (in the shape of a triangle) and maintain the position, while the opponent only has two squares on which to move. It is a strategic maneuver that forces one's opponent to move where you want him.

Outside of the game of chess, triangulation still manages to be a maneuver meant to force a desired result.  I‘ve noticed in my family systems, the tactic is associated with granddaughters rather than pawns. In situations where two girls are in conflict with one another, one or both often triangulate with a third person (or thing) in an attempt to curtail anxiety and garner support. Case in point, feuding sisters, one sister might run to Bettyann, her grandmother, while the other sister might preoccupy her frustration with an iPad. In each case, both triangles create a situation where two are on the inside and one is on the outside. But also in each case, while the anxiety may be reduced momentarily, the source of that anxiety is left unresolved.

I find life is certainly more complicated, now close to seventy, than a game of chess, and yet tactical maneuvers are often learned as if rules to the game of life and relationships. Reflectively, I'm discovering not so constructive coping methods, yet, savvy ways of handling conflict that seem to come both instinctively (as in the case of avoidance or resentment) and with disturbing calculation (as in the case of talking behind someone's back to gain support for my side). When someone has offended me, often the first thing I think to do is to run to a third party. In fact, I am probably more apt to talk to anyone except the person who has hurt me. The move is a strategic one. Feeling like an insider is far more comforting than facing the one who has made me the outsider. A triangle always seems more comforting than a straight line.

But triangulation is no more a comfort in life than it is in chess. It is not a move meant to console myself, but to defeat my opponent. Speaking with his disciples, Jesus offered a rule more fitting with life and neighbors than opponents and a game. "If another member of the church sins against you," he said, "go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone" (Matthew 18:15). Jesus gave a rule suited for relationships. In line with his command for loving neighbors and praying for enemies, his anti-triangulation tactic for conflict is one that deeply considers the weight of life and relationships. (Not to mention, it is a tactic that I was taught years ago when studying the art of counseling.)

Making the straight line to the one who has seemed to have harmed me is not a move without difficulty, but it is a move with possibility. Jesus has instructed me to forgive enemies, to love neighbors, and to confront another privately and directly. He has placed before me far more than stoic commands intended for the sake of the other party, but grace and life itself for me, who is holding on to the consequences as well. While avoiding the source of an offense sometimes seems to bring consolation, it is imperative I learn to live inside a system filled with grudge or hate or disappointment. Going to Bettyann, my family, or friends to rally support for my side or sympathy for my frustrations, I really only rally more frustration. In fact, I form triangles around it and keep it safe. On the contrary, the direct path to the one who has seemingly harmed me offers the chance for resolution and the possibility of release. In this way I make a choice to see neighbors rather than opponents and relationships rather than winning, a move that remembers even enemies are made in God's image, a move that holds forgiveness as a possibility even when it isn't fully sought. It is this very move that Christ went all the way to the cross to make for me.