A short Heroic Plus One podcast episode in which Brian Johnson recounts a weekend at the Texas State Chess Championships with his son Emerson. Though Emerson won a large trophy, the highlight was a moment when Emerson gave $20 to a busking family and felt that helping them was more meaningful than winning. The episode weaves small anecdotes (hotel smoke-alarm light, Dave & Buster’s outing) into a reflection on gratitude and creating micro-moments of love.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one we talked about my adventure with Emerson to the Texas State Chess Championships. We dominated our protocols and practiced our philosophy and had an amazing weekend way before and independent of Emerson bringing home a very large trophy. But winning the chess matches wasn't the highlight of the weekend. There were a number of other moments and one in particular that was much more powerful. First, a little more context. Emerson played his first game on a Friday night at 7:15pm Literally his normal bedtime. Perfect. We dominated the blue light blocking glasses and then dominated the match. Then. Then got back to the hotel to dominate a good night of sleep. And after tucking ourselves in, we noticed that for some strange reason, the hotel designers thought it was an awesome idea to have the smoke alarm thing blinking in a remarkably bright green light five feet above our head, perfectly angled to bounce off the 2,000 inch plasma TV screen near the foot of our bed. We laughed. Then we tried to tape my underwear on the wall to cover that blinking. It worked until it fell off the wall. And ont 15 minutes after we were asleep, we laughed some more. Then we went down to the lobby and got some extra strong tape that did the job. And I had that misty moment I mentioned yesterday as we fell asleep after playing footsie in our king sized bed. But circadian code blue light blocking wisdom aside, that's not quite the point of today's plus one. Fast forward 20 hours and Emerson has played his three games. On Saturday I decide that we'll celebrate by going to Dave and Buster's. He's never been to that big of an arcade and I knew he'd love it. So we're walking the mile from the conference center to the arcade. He's using my phone to navigate us. We get into the little strip mall place where the arcade is and we see a mom and dad and two kids playing their violins, asking for money. Emerson asks if we can give them some money. I told him that we didn't have any cash. He insisted. Then I realized I did have some cash stashed away in my wallet and gave him some money to give to the family. He walked up and gave the mom $20. The woman looked at him with an open heart and said, bless you. Thank you so much. I got tears in my eyes as I was typing that and it was impossible not to feel her true deep gratitude. And I can tell Emerson felt it too. I asked him, hey buddy, how did that feel? And he said it felt amazing. And I asked him, think about how you felt winning all those games today. And he felt into that. Then I asked him what felt better, winning all those games or helping this family? And he didn't hesitate for a second as he said this felt way better. To which I said, exactly. Remember that helping people is why we do what we do. And that moment was the highlight of our weekend and something we have reflected on often since. And that's today's plus one. Here's to appreciating the blessings of our lives and creating as many micro moments of love as we can with our loved ones and with our world today.
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