The sun sets on another day…
Sunset was wistful and winsome, another brisk day with a promise of spring. Somewhere in this day there is spring and a lot more coming!
I played trivia tonight and there was a whole section on chess. Chess is a fantastic game of strategy and long term thinking. To win you usually (not always) have to plan out a significant number of moves ahead and in the process determine your best path while determining your opponents path and countering. I have found that I am usually playing myself when I play, and my opponent is simply setting the stage for the game. The game itself can be quite humbling or fantastic.
In my early 30s I found Battle Chess. It took chess to a new level and I enjoyed playing a computer for a while. Then I set chess aside as no person wanted to play. My chessboards sat empty for along time. As we were playing trivia tonight I thought about chess a lot and how life and chess are similar.
In both chess and life you play in the moment but you have to consider the future moves you have to make, and how to get there. In both chess and life your past sets foundations for you, but your play in the moment is far more important. There are allowed moves, and not so allowed moves in both chess and the real world. Along the way, the game play is more important than the outcome and you learn about your opponents by how they play, and how they win and lose.
I suppose there are a multitude of similar games. Each can be amazing and each is a fantastic example of a different way to see life. From Go, to Chess it seems that games are meant to mirror the complexities of life, at least to a smaller scale, and perhaps teach us before we face the worst of it all.
What do you think? Is life but a dream or is life a series of moves that lead us forward and teach us as we go. I would like to think every game makes us wiser, and shows us perspectives that will help us grow. Perhaps I am an idealist, but I like to think I see a lot of sides of the elephant, always.
So as the sun sets on another day, the queen may seem like the most powerful piece and it is the most flexible, but consider the lowly pawn who scrimps and works his way to the other side, only to become a second queen. Who is stronger? Someone given their strength or someone who has to face adversity to find it. I think the latter. Find your way, gain your power, and make this world a world you understand more each day, no matter what.
Sleep sweet, love deeply, and checkmate…