Tim
At the local chess club, one of the veteran players is an older gentleman named Tim. For most of the time I have known him, he has smoked excessively and was an alcoholic, although I believe in the past couple of years he has managed to kick both those habits, which I am incredibly impressed by. He walks with a cane and is skinny and frail, with discoloured skin and often disheveled appearance, but he is a great chess player. He seems to care little for the results of his games though, and most often gets himself into a winning position before offering his opponent a draw, and if they decline he goes on to grind them down and claims victory. He once told me about playing in the European Junior Championships, getting black out drunk one evening and sleeping underneath a truck nearby the venue.Whenever anybody asks Tim how he is doing, he always says exactly the same thing. He lets out a wheeze, and quietly jokes: "still breathing" with a wry smile. The first few times I just thought it was a bit of dark humour, that he was simply aware of his own waning health. But the more I think about it, the more I think there is something to simply being "still breathing".