Dr. Leahcim Semaj
Psychologist | Author | Social Philosopher
The Semaj MindSpa — Where Mind, Spirit, and Science Meet
Sometimes the struggle is not evidence that you are losing. You may simply be getting closer.
I have been thinking about chess. Not so much about the game itself, but about what happens as the game moves towards its conclusion. At the beginning, the board is crowded. Everybody has pieces. There are possibilities everywhere. You make a move, your opponent makes a move, and there is still plenty of room to recover from a mistake. Then things begin to tighten. Pieces disappear. Space becomes limited. Options narrow. A move that might have been harmless twenty minutes earlier can now cost you the game. And here is the part that interests me. Just when you appear to be getting closer to winning, the game can become more difficult. That sounds a lot like life.
Who Told Us Progress Was Supposed to Get Easier?
Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the idea that if we are doing things properly, life should gradually become easier. Work hard. Become successful. Make some money. Raise the children. Pay off the house. Build a reputation. Learn from your mistakes. Eventually, surely, you should be able to coast. Well… maybe.
At 75, I am not convinced. Some things certainly become easier. You know yourself better – or at least you should. You don’t need everybody’s approval quite as much. You have seen enough crises to know that most of them eventually pass. But progress also creates a different kind of difficulty.
When I was a young psychologist trying to establish myself, there was relatively little infrastructure to protect. If something didn’t work, I could change direction and try something else. Four decades into a career, the calculation is different. There is a body of work. A reputation. Relationships. People who depend on you. Things you have spent years building. You cannot – or perhaps should not – move around the board with the same recklessness. The game has changed.
The Board Gets Smaller
The chessboard, of course, never physically gets smaller. But psychologically, it does. Early in the game, there may be ten reasonable moves available. Near the end, perhaps only two. Sometimes one. Life feels a little like that to me now. At 25, you can decide, “I’ll try this for five years. If it doesn’t work, I’ll do something else.” Five years at 25 is one thing. Five years at 75 is something else.
I don’t say that morbidly. Quite the opposite. I expect to keep working, writing, learning, loving, travelling, creating and irritating people for quite some time. But mathematics is mathematics. Time becomes more valuable precisely because there is less of it ahead than behind. That changes how you choose. It certainly should.
Sometimes It Gets Harder Because You’re Getting Closer
We tend to interpret resistance as a message: Stop. This isn’t working. Sometimes that is exactly what resistance means. But not always. Ask anyone who has seriously tried to lose weight. The first pounds may disappear relatively quickly. Those last few can behave as if they have acquired squatters’ rights. Writing can be similar. Starting an article is sometimes easy. Finishing it, deciding that this is what you actually want to say and putting your name on it, is another matter.
Relationships do this too. Two people can date happily for months. Then somebody says, “So, where is this going?” Suddenly issues appear that weren’t visible before. Money. Children. Former partners. Living arrangements. Sex. Independence. Who squeezes the toothpaste from the middle. The relationship hasn’t necessarily gone bad. It may simply have become real. The closer we get to something meaningful, the more we have to lose. And something else happens. We also have more to gain. That can frighten us too.
The Most Dangerous Opponent May Be Sitting on Your Side of the Board
When I first thought about this chess metaphor, the obvious question was: Who is the opponent? It is tempting to identify some external villain. The boss who doesn’t appreciate you. The business competitor. The person undermining you. The former spouse. The critic. The relative who always seems uncomfortable when you’re doing well. Those people exist. But I suspect that, for many of us, the more difficult opponent is closer to home. Fear. Ego. Comfort. Procrastination. Habit. The need to be liked. The need to be right. The inability to walk away from something simply because we have already invested twenty years in it. These are formidable opponents because they know us intimately. They have been studying our game for years. They know exactly which piece we are likely to sacrifice.
Be Careful of the Desperate Move
A chess player who senses that the game is slipping away may become dangerous. Not necessarily because the player has suddenly become brilliant. Sometimes desperation simply produces unpredictable moves. We do this in life. A person approaching retirement suddenly becomes involved in an investment promising extraordinary returns because ordinary returns no longer seem exciting enough. A man with a good marriage decides he needs to prove that he can still attract somebody twenty-five years younger. A respected professional spends forty years building a reputation and damages it in forty minutes because ego takes control. A business owner who has been successful for decades suddenly chases an opportunity in an industry he knows absolutely nothing about because somebody tells him, “This is where the money is now.”
And there is that dangerous word: More.
More money. More recognition. More property. More applause. More excitement. More proof that I still matter. At some point, wisdom has to enter the game. The question can no longer be, What else can I get? A better question might be: What is worth risking what I already have?
The Anchor Leg Requires a Different Strategy
This becomes especially important in what I call the Anchor Leg of Life. In a relay race, the anchor runner is not supposed to behave as if the race has just started. The anchor receives the baton with a history attached. Other people have already run. Positions have been established. Some ground may have been gained. Some may have been lost.
Now your job is to finish well. That is increasingly how I see life at 75. By now, surely, I should know something about my own game. I should know which temptations have repeatedly cost me. I should know the difference between an opportunity and a distraction. I should know that every invitation does not require a yes, every insult does not require a response, and every opponent does not deserve a place at my chessboard. This doesn’t mean becoming passive. Far from it. I still want to create. I still want to contribute. I still want new experiences. I still expect to surprise myself. But I am becoming increasingly selective about what deserves one of my remaining moves.
So What Exactly Is Checkmate?
This may be the more interesting question. When we were younger, checkmate was fairly easy to define. Get the degree. Build the career. Buy the house. Make some money. Find somebody to love. Raise the children. Become somebody. Nothing wrong with any of that. Those achievements matter. But somewhere along the way, the definition of winning may change.
At 75, checkmate looks different to me. Peace matters more. So does health. Mobility. Time. Intimacy. Meaningful relationships. Curiosity. Purpose. Having enough resources to make choices without constantly worrying about money. Being able to sit quietly in your own home and actually enjoy being there.
And leaving something useful behind. Not necessarily a monument. Something useful. A thought. A book. A lesson. A child you raised well. A person whose life changed because you showed up when it mattered. Perhaps one of the great tragedies of life would be reaching the end of the game and discovering that you spent decades trying to win a game you never really wanted to play. Worse, somebody else may have chosen the game for you.
Don’t Mistake Difficulty for Defeat
So when things become difficult, I try not to immediately conclude that something has gone wrong. Maybe it has. We should not romanticise struggle. Some doors are closed because we should stop banging on them. But difficulty can mean something else. It may suggest that the stakes have changed. That you are approaching something important. That the easy moves are gone and the remaining ones require more thought. Study the board. Protect what matters. Let go of pieces that no longer serve the larger strategy. Don’t make permanent decisions because of temporary panic.
And perhaps most importantly, stop trying to capture every piece. You don’t have to win every argument. You don’t have to defeat everybody who underestimated you. You don’t have to prove to every critic that you were right. Some victories are simply too expensive. The real challenge is to understand your game, decide what winning means at this stage of your life, and use your remaining moves accordingly. Because the chess game of life may indeed become harder the closer you get to checkmate. That does not necessarily mean you are losing. You may finally be getting close.
The MindSpa Question
Look at the chessboard of your own life. Not the board you had ten years ago. The board in front of you right now. What pieces are still in play? What are you protecting that no longer needs protecting? What are you risking that you cannot afford to lose? And perhaps the biggest question: What does checkmate, winning at life, actually mean to you now?
Dr. Leahcim Semaj
Transformational Psychologist
The Semaj MindSpa
The Best Is Yet to Come.