My kuya introduced me to the game of chess. Like every kid learning it for the first time, my moves were predictable—from the opening all the way to my defeat.
What made it worse was this:
I wasn’t just losing… I was repeating the very same moves that led me to losing.
Kuya from the other end of the board wasn’t adjusting either. He simply repeated the same sequence—the same traps, the same punishments.
Guess who won?
Definitely not me.
It got to the point where I couldn’t even enjoy Voltes V anymore. Losing had become a pattern, and I didn’t know how to break it.
One Sunday morning, my Tatay asked me to play chess with him.
I didn’t want to—but he said something that caught me off guard:
“Hindi ako magaling. Baka matalo mo ako.”
So I played.
Then something strange happened after I pushed my first white pawn.
He opened with black…
but not the way kuya did.
He moved a pawn in front of the knight on the king’s side.
That one move disrupted everything I thought I knew.
For the first time, I couldn’t rely on memory.
I had to think.
I responded differently.
I explored.
I made new decisions.
I still lost that game.
But something had changed.
For the first time, I was no longer just playing moves.
I was beginning to see patterns.
Years passed, and I slowly understood the game.
I was never the best player—but I started winning.
And I realized something deeper than chess:
If we keep making the same moves,
we will keep getting the same results.
Losing is not always about lack of skill—
sometimes, it is simply the repetition of an unexamined pattern.
And winning?
Winning is often just the consistent execution of a pattern that works.
So why change, if it works?
Because success can also be situational.
A winning move only remains winning
as long as the environment stays the same.
Change the board—
and the same move may no longer save you.
On the losing side, the pattern is clearer.
We fail…
not because we don’t try,
but because we repeat.
The same decisions.
The same reactions.
The same thinking.
Failure becomes precise.
Almost perfect.
Breaking that pattern does not guarantee victory.
But it guarantees something more important:
A new game.
A new fight.
A new possibility.
Radical change in the future
demands radical decisions in the present.
Originally published on Benjie's Bench - Measuring Life's lessons in Millimeters
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