Rex Weyler on Life Lessons Learned from Go
2013-07-20
It was the problems that hooked Rex Weyler. The Greenpeace founder had just learned go from writer Rick Fields ("Chop Wood, Carry Water") "and Rick gave me a beginner's book — Ishigure's In The Beginning, I think — and I took it home that night in 1981 and the life and death problems were so fascinating that the game absolutely hooked me. Weyler, a reknowned environmental activist and journalist, has been playing go ever since. When he co-founded the Hollyhock learning center on Cortes Island in British Columbia the following year, Weyler made sure that a go workshop was included, initially led by Canadian go player Roy Langston, and then for many years by American James Kerwin 1P. After a hiatus, the Hollyhock go workshop returned this year, this time with Janice Kim 3P, and of course Weyler, who has moved back to Cortes Island, was there. "Go fits in with the way I see the world," Weyler told the E-Journal in an interview earlier this week in his home overlooking a spectacular view of Lake Hague. "I trained in math but became a writer, and go is a wonderful combination of logic and aesthetics. And the better you can balance the two, the better you can play." After more than three decades of playing, Weyler says "I'm still learning lessons from go that apply to life. Be aggressive but show retraint; it's okay to be optimistic but that's not a strategy. You've got to get outside and see the bigger picture," Weyler says, speaking as both a go player and ecologist. "Go, if you play well, teaches you different ways of thinking."
- report/photo by Chris Garlock; photo: Weyler (l) playing with former AGA President Phil Straus at Hollyhock. Learn more about Weyler's work on his website.
- Source from American Go E-Journal
- report/photo by Chris Garlock; photo: Weyler (l) playing with former AGA President Phil Straus at Hollyhock. Learn more about Weyler's work on his website.
- Source from American Go E-Journal
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