A student came into my classroom weeks ago and asked to use a laptop from my class set. Whenever I stay in my room during my lunch rather than venture off to the teacher’s lounge, a few beloved students inevitably meander in and make themselves at home in my room. I’m often eating, working, or sometimes praying my daily rosary in silence, but they like to hang out, chat, and sit in my company. The occasional student will ask for a laptop for schoolwork.
What do you need the computer for?
It was a pretty routine question…superfluous even…particularly with this studious individual. I expected any number of standard responses, but I was caught off guard.
I want to play chess.
Only a fool would deny a youth’s request to play chess at a moment of leisure. Wisdom and better judgement demanded me to oblige. I then proceeded to learn the game of chess myself (thanks chess.com) — following my student’s lead onward toward the light of the eternal Kingdom.
Two months have elapsed since this occurrence. In my attempt to learn to play the game, I’ve managed to accumulate dozens (hundreds?) of hours of chess so far and dozens upon dozens of losses — quite jovially, I might add. There’s definitely a steep learning curve. But I’ve enjoyed the incessant barrage of skilled players (and higher performing bots) exploiting my weakness. It drives me to play more. It fuels my passion. Defeat has never tasted so sweet.
Odd, I know. It feels just as weird as it sounds (isn’t the truth always a tad odd to the uninitiated and untrained soul?). Perpetual defeat has never been enjoyable to me, much less a source of motivation. Loss — particularly in public and in the presence of others — always brings about an internal onslaught of shame and self-conscious paralysis. It doesn’t motivate, it stifles. But here I am now, both glad and willing to make a public spectacle of myself on the chess board — and with every loss, my love of chess increases? What a mystery. A paradox of enlivening defeat; of an upward fall.1
Accordingly, brothers, if we want to reach the highest summit of humility, if we desire to attain speedily that exaltation in heaven to which we climb by the humility of this present life, then by our ascending actions we must set up that ladder on which Jacob in a dream saw angels descending and ascending (Gen 28:12). Without doubt, this descent and ascent can signify only that we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility. Now the ladder erected is our life on earth, and if we humble our hearts the Lord will raise it to heaven.2
Defeat is aiding me in my ascent to heaven. It’s training me in the way of wisdom: I must unhand my insecurities, my fears, and my fallacies by admitting them; I must begin each match with a willingness to lose; I must love Defeat and seek it out like treasure. Only then can I triumph and receive my crown.
Now, therefore, after ascending all these steps of humility, the monk will quickly arrive at that perfect love of God which casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Through this love, all that he once performed with dread he will now begin to observe without effort, as though naturally, from habit, no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue. All this the Lord will by the Holy Spirit graciously manifest in his workman now cleansed of vices and sins.3
By beckoning me to tread the lowly road of loss with humility in my heart, Defeat purifies me — because humility is the seed of virtue — and I begin my steady ascent to heaven.
I’ve gotten a lot better. But I still lose. I still love losing; and my students love beating me. The master becomes the student, the students become my master; and together we take the descending road to our celestial homeland, preparing our filthy bodies and tarnished souls for union with the Almighty by becoming Kings of Defeat on wisdom’s playground.
Dulce lux mei: Befriend me — most noble, wise, saccharine Defeat.
Fagerberg, David. Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2016). Fagerberg makes good use of this paradoxical “upward fall” in his work. The image is one of the more enduring influences his book has had on my theological imagination.
St. Benedict of Nursia. Rule of St. Benedict, ed. Timothy Fry, OSB (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1981). Chapter XII.
Ibid.