Playing Tenuki

My favorite game to play is Go. Both players place stones on a board, trying to make territory by moving their stones. Like all strategy games, it boils down to a sequence of choices. One kind of choice you must make every move involves deciding whether to play sente or play tenuki. Playing sente means responding directly to an opponent’s last move. Say your opponent gains territory in the upper left corner —— you play sente by retaliating in that same upper left corner. To play tenuki is to ignore what has been played and play somewhere else. It’s a move that sometimes dramatically shifts the landscape of a game; the 1846 ear reddening move played by Hon'inbō Shūsaku was a tenuki still remembered today for that reason.

For someone coming from a chess background this would seem strange: how can you win by deciding not to fight? But sometimes games are won by the choice to play elsewhere, to assess a situation and instead of fighting it, make peace with it. That choice is how I defeated insomnia.

My battle with insomnia still leaves its marks in my room; I am surrounded by the choices I made fighting it. Most choices are sente, choosing to fight sleeplessness head on. Duct tape plasters the indicator lights of my table fan. My loud quartz watch still hides in the sock drawer. But my winning move is a note, folded like a back-to-school name tent. It reads: One must imagine Sisyphus happy—Albert Camus. It was the move to play elsewhere. In a sleepless moment, not trying to sleep, but trying to enjoy myself.

My first night awake was the first sunrise I watched with disgust. I remember counting down the hours: If I sleep now, I’ll get 5 hours. Now 4 hours... 3... 2... The sky grows pink; I turn off my alarm. After that night, I tried everything to sleep—muscle relaxation, breathing techniques, melatonin, interpretive dance. Night after night I played sente, move after move. But I could only do this so many times before I’d start counting the hours again. Then I started counting days. Turning off my alarm became heartbreaking to do.

My tenuki was reading The Myth of Sisyphus. 

I gradually realized the territory I gained. I saw myself trying to sleep in how Sisyphus pushes that boulder only to watch it fall—so no, Camus, I couldn't imagine Sisyphus happy. I couldn’t imagine what Camus considered fundamental: that Sisyphus doesn’t hope; he accepts his lack of control. I did understand Camus’ argument, that when Sisyphus lives only in the moment, he can make the best out of pushing—he can enjoy it. But he was wrong; I couldn’t make the best out of insomnia. I still had to go to school and take tests. I couldn’t continue sleeping during lunch. I couldn’t just choose to accept; I had to hope I could win my fight.

Then one night, I jolted out of bed after repeating a breathing technique for an hour. What the hell was I doing? It was then that I realized, like Sisyphus, I had no control. And like Sisyphus, I could embrace sleeplessness. I could choose not to sleep. Like Sisyphyus, I could play elsewhere. I went over to my shelf, grabbed a book and my earphones, and put on The Strokes.

The irony in my choice not to sleep is not lost on me. I would be lying if I said that my long term opponent, the one who actually sat across from me every night, was not insomnia. But my choice not to play Him directly is not resignation, but like the essence of tenuki, to live mutually when the fight is no longer profitable. It may seem unnatural, and nights when I had to force every gram of my body to push against heavy-lidded hours were indeed nights that irony was a real stabbing thing with weight. But the art of the tenuki is choosing long term. And so I waited.

Trying and failing to sleep gave me anxiety about sleeping, and that kept me awake. After I stopped trying, I started to fall asleep, book in arms, earphones in ears. But that comes as a later realization. In those sleepless moments when I just did what I enjoyed, I realized that if I could remain content with what I could control, insomnia didn’t control me. I realized I could watch the sunrise after a night awake, not with disgust, but with ease. I realized that sometimes in order to defeat an opponent, you can’t choose to fight them head on, but you need to play elsewhere first. 

Sometimes you need to choose tenuki.