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'The happiest day of your life is never over'

  • GARRY KASPAROV

But first, listen to your mother, a chess champion tells new graduates.  


kasparovGarry Kasparov

World chess champion Garry Kasparov gave the Commencement Address for graduands at Saint Louis University earlier this month.  He also received an honorary degree from the university, in the city known as the world capital of chess.  It was the first to host a world chess championship — back in 1886.

Kasparov, who hails from Baku in Azerbaijan, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, spoke to the graduates about his mother and father, democracy struggles, dreams, hard work, eternal human values, risk and new frontiers.  He urged the young people not to rest on their new laurels, because the world needs them now.  The following are excerpts from his speech, which was posted on Facebook.

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Listen to your mother!

When I was a little boy, growing up in Baku, my mother told me I could become the world chess champion someday.  I don't know if anyone else believed her, but I believed her.  Years later, the sports authorities in the Soviet Union told me that I was a troublemaker, and that I could not become the world chess champion.  Well, in 1985 I did become world champion, and this taught me the first important lesson I wish to share with you all today: listen to your mother!

Six years after that, the Soviet Union and all of its sports authorities ceased to exist while my mother is still going strong.  And she is still telling me what I am capable of — and to eat my vegetables.  Everyone will tell you to believe in yourself, and this of course is true.  Only you can decide your course and only you can make it happen.  But you must also listen to those who believe in you and to take strength from their love and from their support.  Often they remind us to aim high, higher than you might aim on your own, especially when you are young.  I am quite sure that if you all accomplish what your mothers believe you can accomplish, that this will be the most successful graduating class in the history of the world.

And for those of you who lost a parent or parents at a young age, as I lost my father when I was seven, your achievement here today reflects a special kind of strength.  We are all shaped by absence as well as by presence.

The happiest day of your life is not over

When I won the world championship in 1985 I was 22 years old and it was the greatest day of my life.  I imagine today is a similar feeling for many of you.  You are young, you are strong, and you have a long-time goal in your hands.

On that day in 1985, a strange thing happened.  I was standing there on the stage, still with my flowers and my medal, the happiest person in the world, when I was approached by Rona Petrosian, the widow of a former world chess champion from the 60s, Tigran Petrosian.  I was expecting another warm congratulations, but she had something else in mind.  "Young man," she said, "I feel sorry for you."  What?  Sorry for me?  Sorry for me?  The youngest world champion in history, on top of the world?  "I feel sorry for you," she continued, "because the happiest day of your life is over."

Wow, I couldn't believe it.  What a thing to say.  But as I got over my shock I began to wonder… what if she's right?  And while I did not think much more about it on that celebratory day, I slowly came to realize that Rona Petrosian had given me a new goal in my life: to prove her wrong!

Now I realize she did me a favor that day, and so I will pass her gift on to you.  Is the happiest day of your life over?  Or do you already have a new dream, a new goal, a new plan?  Graduation is about the future, and not just about your future.  Few people expect to change the history of the world, but in some way you all will.  It is up to you to decide if you will change the world with your presence — or if it will change in your absence.

Be optimistic

I am an optimist.  I am an optimist because I believe we have the power to change things.  We are not helpless spectators to economic cycles or the forces of history. ….

Democracy and human rights

Dreaming of changing the world means being prepared to take risks, to sacrifice, and to fail, and to try again.  When I retired from professional chess ten years ago to join the pro-democracy movement in Russia, many people thought I was crazy.  And some of them told me so!  I was still the number one player in the world, after all, and challenging Vladimir Putin's dictatorship was far more complex than the black and white world of the chessboard.  Of course I understood this.  In chess we have fixed rules and unpredictable results.  In Putin's Russia's phony elections it's exactly the opposite.

I made this bold move because I realized that my own dream was not just about chess, but had always been about making a difference.  I had accomplished everything I could in the world of professional chess, from world championship matches to battling against super-computers.  I hoped I could still make a difference in Russia, and in human rights.  I wanted to learn and contribute in other areas that fascinated me, like education, and human plus machine intelligence, and decision-making.  I was 42 at the time, which tells you that it is never too late to dream.

Hard work is a talent

You often hear in chess and other sports that "this player is more talented" but "that player works harder."  This is a fallacy.  Hard work is a talent.  The ability to keep trying when others quit is a talent… Human beings cannot upgrade our hardware, that's our DNA.  But with hard work we can definitely upgrade our mental software.

Morality: holding fast to eternal human values

But what is intelligence, education, and effort without the guiding hand of morality?  asked Kasparov, putting before the graduates the example of Thomas More, who died "as the king's good servant, but God's first."

More wrote [in Utopia] that in an ideal society based on clear principles, many laws were not necessary.  He wrote, "They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many."  …

How many laws we have is not the point.  The world is a complicated place, far more complicated today than when Thomas More wrote his novel 500 years ago, and laws must keep up with the times.  What has not changed, what should not change, what cannot change, is the need to base our laws, and our lives, and our dreams, on eternal human values.

We can fight for our values or we can trade them away for comfort and temporary security.  This is a challenge for all of us in today's globally connected world.  Every day we make choices large or small: individuals, companies, entire nations.  Are those choices guided by the values we treasure?  Are we loyal to the principles of individual freedom, of faith, of excellence, of compassion, of the value of human life?  Or do we trade them away, bit by bit, for material goods, for a quiet life, and to pass the problems of today on to the next generation?

These moral values are also the values of innovation and the free market, by the way.  It is no coincidence that these founding American values created the greatest democracy in the world and also the greatest economy in the world.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged his believers to be a "City on a Hill", a shining example to the world, a phrase used to describe America by John F.  Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.  I saw that America from the other side of the Iron Curtain and I can tell you that it mattered.  And it matters still.

New frontiers … the world needs you now

On my sixth birthday I woke up to find an enormous globe next to my bed.  It was the best present I have ever received.  I had to rub my eyes to make sure it was real.  My favourite childhood stories were the ones my father read to me about the voyages of Marco Polo, Columbus, and Magellan.  Our favourite game was to trace the journeys of these great explorers across the globe.  These are the last and fondest memories I have of my father, and this love of exploration was his greatest gift to me. ….

There are still new frontiers today, and a limitless number of new inventions waiting to be discovered by people with the curiosity and courage to look for them, and the freedom to do so.  It will require belief, hard work, and the values of innovation and liberty.  It will require your belief, your hard work, and your ideas.  You might say you aren't ready for a new challenge right away, that you want time to relax, to celebrate, to rest on your new laurels.  I'm sorry, but the world will not wait for you.  The world needs you now.

Today you have fulfilled one dream, and tomorrow you set course on a new one.  If you always have a dream, the happiest day of your life is never over.  Thank you and God Bless.  

This is Meaghen Gonzalez, Editor of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.

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Acknowledgement

Garry Kasparov. "'The happiest day of your life is never over.'" Mercatornet (May 25, 2015).

Reprinted with permission of Mercatornet under a Creative Commons licence. The original article is here

The Author

A legend in the world of chess, Garry Kasparov came to international fame as the youngest world chess champion in history in 1985 at the age of 22, and spent 20 years as the world's top ranked player. Since retiring from chess in 2005 he has become an outspoken voice in the pro-democracy movement in Russia and a powerful advocate of education and human rights around the world.

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