It’s probably a sign of too much hanging out with Tim Aten that one begins to feel past his prime before most people’s “prime” even starts. Not that I’ve ever had a “prime” to pass, mind you. I just said “mind you,” which one of those writerly phrases that we use even though it has next to no non-semantic meaning, and I can already hear the snorts of disdain. I don’t feel like I’m “on my way out,” as it were. I’m just at a… waning crest, is the best way to put it.
It’s like Mind’s Desiring for seven and losing the game. At the end of last year I felt like I had picked up all this momentum, was at the absolute top of my game, and had nowhere to go but up. Fast forward five months, and I puttered out of a Pro Tour only to face having to PTQ for the first time in a year in a season with only two stops close to home. Moreover, I missed out on GP: Dallas and a PTQ in St. Louis due to circumstances beyond my control, so I haven’t even been able to compete. Forget “going out with a bang;” I’m barely an irrelevant puff of smoke! There’s a real possibility I might miss a Pro Tour stop, which all but neuters my lofty ambitions of gravy-training I had around Christmastime of last year.
It’d be one thing to go out clawing my way up the tree but falling just short of that top branch. It’d even be fine to bomb out entirely, knowing Extended just wasn’t my season. But Richard and I broke the format (at that point), put our deck in the Top 8 of a Grand Prix halfway around the world, and have been a step ahead of the metagame for every week of play so far. We clearly know what’s going on – and yet, where are the tangibles? We’ve got nothing to show for it, and with only two PTQs left in range, I’m not exactly optimistic about my chances. There seems to be a gap between the amount of time and effort I’ve put into this season and the returns I’ve had to show for it.
Sort of.
This article is in many ways going to be one of those introversive unclear pieces that authors put out from time to time. Part if it is to help me understand what’s been going through my head these last few weeks, and part of it is to help out people who may be going through the same type of thought process as I am. Let me tell you up front: I’m planning on being both vague and ambiguous. I hope I make sense. The logic majors among you are probably going to be ripping hair out in spastic fits. I apologize. We’ll return to cool decklists next week, I promise.
Basically, I’ve been ruminating over two concepts. The first is why human beings as a whole feel compelled to point out why things that are left to chance are, well, things that are left to chance. More specifically, it seems like a process of affirmation, an attempt to ease our doubts about what is and is not up to us. It’s a way to allay our perceived failings – possibly. The second is the idea of, as best I can put it, entitlement, or why we think we deserve things. I catch myself slipping into these traps a lot lately, and I want to understand why.
I’ll begin by saying I’ve been criticized very often for adhering to the polar opposite position of most Magic players: I think that, when it comes down to it, the more skilled player wins the match a vast majority of the time. At every recent PTQ I’ve been to, at least 80% of games have been decided by some sort of play error on either my or my opponent’s part. These may be misapplications of strategy, these may be errors in deck construction or sideboarding, or these may be good ol’ flat-out punts. But I see it happen a lot, and therefore tend to place most of the blame for failure on myself.
I point this out so that you’ll understand that when I use words like “traps” as I did earlier, I’m highlighting one of my own biases. The truth is I have no proof that either affirmation or entitlement are defense mechanisms, or are even in any way invalid. They just feel like they are, and I’m very cautious of that. I actually hate the trend in pop culture (I almost just wrote “contemporary pop culture,” which would make me puke; is there any other kind of pop culture?) (and I just used a semicolon inside a parenthetical, and I swear I’m not trying to dissect every element of linguistics that appears inside my work) to emphasize feeling (the word just makes me cringe) (three, now four of these in one sentence, and this isn’t even deliberate) over reason and argument, because it can only lead to poor decisions. So the fact that I’m doing the exact same thing makes me all too aware of the possibility that I might be going down a dead end here. Oh well. Bear with me. I’d say I’d make it worth your while, but I mean.
Alright. What I want to understand is why I feel worse about this particular season where I haven’t had the opportunity to qualify versus others where I’ve been to tons of PTQs and just didn’t make the cut. It’s as if I have anxiety over somehow not trying hard enough, when that clearly isn’t possible – I couldn’t have attended any more events! Moreover, there’s still two PTQs left, and yet it seems like the season’s completely over already.
For example, notice that I’ve pointed out at least three times that I’ve missed opportunities to qualify due to circumstances beyond my control. What difference does that make? Not only is the end result the same, but it’s not as if removing the possibility of an alternative abdicates me of responsibility. Actually, to be more precise, it’s not as if there is any responsibility to be abdicated.
The classic parallel to this situation is of course the bad beat story. Very rarely is a bad beat story told solely because of its own merits. I mean, I’ve got the “Congregation At Dawn, lose the game” fiasco, but by and large “I drew 14 lands” is not all that interesting. Yet players everywhere (including myself) persist in perturbing the poor molecules around our mouths with these types of stories day in and day out. The fact that we feel it necessary to call attention to this anomaly, to justify the fact that we lost, suggests an anxiety over that loss that shouldn’t be there if in fact it was all up to the machinations of fate.
I had a great conversation the other day with my Mock Trial coach (of all people) about how fascinating it is that it’s difficult to admit that we’ve ever given it our best and lost anyway. In Magic it’s a little different (speaking about the course of one single game) because there’s always that element of chance, but think about how many times you’ve heard athletes say “we just didn’t try hard enough” after a very close game. What’s not okay about not being the best all of the time? I’m not even talking about the times where we intentionally act lazy in the first place – the “well, I wrote that paper in thirty minutes, so it’s okay if I get a B” days. That’s a whole new article, but suffice to say there’s no inherent value in spending as little effort as possible. I’m talking about the times where our absolute best just isn’t “best” enough.
Don’t get me wrong, either; I’m a very competitive person. But Mirko Cro Cop has four career losses, and the ’86 Celtics had seventeen. We have to be realistic, and absolute perfection (or the desire thereof) can’t be our goal. Saying that it is only makes us look foolish when we have to justify perfectly normal occurrences to come to terms with our angst.
The other possibility, though, is that we get pissed when we draw 14 lands not because it’s a complete matter of chance, but because we think we don’t deserve it. To use my own example, I get pissed for missing a Pro Tour because I think I’m incredibly good at Magic and very well prepared, and therefore that I somehow am entitled to a slot. There’s nobody in the world I’m afraid of money drafting if I can pick my teammates, and nobody in the world I think can flat stone outbuild me if I can sit down for two weeks of solid testing with Richard Feldman. So I think “I ought to be there, and I’m angry that I’m not.” But the more I examine this thought process, the dumber it seems.
I find a lot of illumination in the way the following phrase is said: “I mulliganed to four. It was so ridiculous.” No, it’s not ridiculous at all; it’s just very unlikely. “Well, I’m upset because it’s just so unlikely,” people generally reply. But if you won the lottery, you wouldn’t be upset. So the addendum to the statement goes something like, “I’m upset because it’s so unlikely, and it hurt me.” That’s no reason to be upset, though. There’s no injustice there. There’s no wrongdoing. You could be… sad, perhaps. The only explanation for anger is a sense of entitlement, and I’ve basically realized that entitlement is wrong.
The journey to that point wasn’t easy, though. I’m currently in the process of applying for a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford, and one of my biggest obstacles right now is the tendency to want to talk about myself. “I’m brilliant,” I want to say, “and I can prove it with all of these scores and all of these things that I have done!” But what I need to do is talk about my research proposal here and now—not what I’ve done in the past, but what I am doing currently and what I would do should I receive the scholarship. My goal shouldn’t be to rest on my laurels. Yet the initial feeling is something along the lines of, “I am so tight, I shouldn’t have to worry with all of this.” But that’s ridiculous! There’s nothing about me that’s inherently worthy of this money and this opportunity.
Similarly, there’s nothing inherently about me or anyone else that “deserves” to keep a seven-card hand “just this once.” Whenever we pound the top of the deck shouting “one time,” we really should ask ourselves, “one time what?” When we think we should be able to enter a tournament without proper playtesting and Top 8 it “because it’s been a long time coming,” we really have to realize that that makes absolutely no sense.
And maybe when I’ve sped out of a season honestly believing that I might be “the future of American Magic,” whatever that means, I really ought to take a step back and be okay with my expectations calming down a bit.
After all, it took HRon like, what, ten years to finally win that Pro Tour?
Of course, “he didn’t try.” That makes him superhuman, right?
Sure. But Kai tried.
Zac