There Is Always a Solution

Transcript

Hey, everyone. This is Brandon from the Play of Infinity. It’s not often I do a video like this. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I did one. But what I wanted to share just wasn’t coming out how I wanted to in text. And so I thought just telling you about it in a quick video would probably be easier.

So I wanted to talk about how there’s always a solution to every problem. There’s always an answer. Okay, because I know a lot of people, there can be things in life that seem impossible, that seem really difficult, you can’t even fathom how it could resolve. And there have been so many times in my life where I’ve basically thrown up my hands and said, “Okay, Universe, I don’t know how you’re going to work this one out.” But here we go; just have at it.

And this recent experience, I hesitated in sharing because it seems so silly on the surface. It seems like, well, that’s not really life or death, that’s not really a big, serious thing, but it really did illustrate this perfectly. And so I thought I’d share it.

So obviously, I am visually impaired and usually, it doesn’t get in the way of things. I do my best to not let it get in the way of things, but occasionally, it presents challenges.

So I’ve been learning or I’ve been trying to get better at chess lately. And unfortunately, a lot of resources are not the most accessible because they will show a chess position on a video and they’ll say, “Think what the next best move is.” But I can’t see the position: there’s no way I can really see that obviously. And so that can be frustrating.

So recently, I signed up for a chess membership on this website. They have, like, dozens and dozens of videos. And most of them are actually pretty accessible because it starts from the opening and then they will call out the moves, you know, e4, e5, Nf3, etc. And so I can follow along pretty well with those.

But a few of them that have to do with tactics and things like that, start in the middle and they just show a position, like I said, and say, “Okay, what’s the best move from here?”

And that doesn’t do me any good, but I wanted to learn from them. I wanted to get the experience. And I emailed them and said, “Is there anything you can do?” There’s a text format that shows a chess position called an FEN. And I said, “Can you share the FENs for the positions in your videos?”

And they said, “Well, not really, it would take a lot of time. There are tons of videos obviously. We don’t have the resources to do that.” Okay. That’s understandable. I get that.

So I wanted to benefit from it, and they said, “Could you just not do those courses?” And I’m like, “Well, sure, I could do that, but I feel like I’d be losing something and I don’t want to do that. That’s not really an option for me. I wanted to learn the best I can learn.” So… and it’s a great membership. I didn’t want to just cancel because of that. So I was trying to think of an option, thought, “There has to be a solution here. There has to be something I can do to access this material,” and just couldn’t think of anything right away.

I tried a few things. We have this service called Aira (A-I-R-A). And it lets you connect with a sighted person; they can help you do something. And I tried that and I said, “Hey, can you look at this position and tell me where the pieces are?”

And that sometimes worked, but sometimes they would mix up the pieces because they didn’t know chess. So they’d mix up pawns and bishops and things like that. So, unfortunately, that didn’t work.

And, I tried posting on Facebook and said, “Hey, I’m looking for someone who can help me. I’m willing to compensate you.” And I got some responses from that, but there were so many videos that I didn’t want to feel like I was taking advantage. I didn’t want to be like, “Hey, can you do this, this, this, this, this video?” and feel like I was taking advantage of them. You know, even if I was compensating them, I just didn’t want to make it awkward with a friend.

So, I thought, “Okay, there has to be a solution. There has to be something I can do here.”

And so, here’s the thing. A lot of times when you manifest a solution, it can seem so mundane. It’s not like magically all the positions are going to be read out in the video, it’s not like something huge is going to happen like that, or whatever. It’s going to be some solution that seems mundane, like, “Oh, I should have thought of that earlier.” That seems so obvious now, but in the moment, I couldn’t think of it.

So, I could have let the frustration bubble over and say, “Oh, this is unfair. I really want to do this,” but that would’ve just led to the same, more of the same.

But instead, I sat down and said, “Okay, I know there has to be a solution. There’s always a solution. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t figure it out. I just have to let it come to me.”

And I think it was probably the next morning or so I thought, “Hey, what about Upwork?” I don’t know if you’re familiar with Upwork, but basically, it’s a site where you can post jobs and freelancers can bid on them and you can hire someone to do whatever tasks for you.

And so I posted a job posting and said, “Hey, I’m visually impaired and I am having trouble with these videos. And I need someone who can translate the positions into this FEN format for me.” And actually got like 12 responses, and a lot of them were good, and I chose the person that was really reasonable price-wise and started working with him and it’s been working great, like, it’s perfect. Yeah, I have to spend a little bit of money, but I get what I need.

So again, seems mundane and I know this isn’t like a life or death situation, and I have plenty more seemingly miraculous examples from the past, but this was just the perfect recent example of things always work out. There’s always a solution.

And even if it doesn’t seem like it in the moment — even in the moment if it seems like “This is impossible, what am I going to do? I can’t do this and it’s not fair.” And some of those thoughts were crossing my mind at first and usually, they don’t, but it was a little frustrating.

But when you just allow and you just sit back and let the universe do its thing, the right solution will come to you. And it will seem really obvious. It will seem kinda mundane, but you manifested it. There’s always a solution, there’s always an answer.

And so I just wanted to tell this experience because I thought it was a perfect example of that. So I hope this helps, I hope you enjoy this video, and have a great day!