Chess As It Applies To Life

I have come to realize in my travels on this earth that life is a lot like a game of chess. Yes, you can play it like you would a game of checkers, and your outcome would be the same as if you'd played a game of checkers. However, I don't think the person that treats life like checkers is too unhappy or to surprised when life kicks the crap out of them. But in life, as with all things, if you take the time to think even a few moves a head, trying to bate fate into doing your bidding, life takes on a whole new intensity that makes even the mundane pawns embrace a unique and tantalizing dimension all their own.

This analogy/simile/metaphor came to me when I was trying to figure out my mom and trying to see her life through her eyes without anger, without frustration, without the general feelings of being manipulated so completely by her. Yes, the old feelings that keep me from moving my pieces on the board of life in a more energetic fashion. Part of this also happened because of a game of chess my nephew challenged me to the night before I wrote the enlightening journal entry. I watched as he used his pieces and made bold, sweeping moves over the whole board. Very brave, very ambitious and very much who the man he has become. And then I looked at my side of the board. My king and queen were carefully guarded by a rook, a bishop and a host of pawns, only moving when absolutely having no other option. I lost, mostly because I have too hard of a time to disengage my brain from the now and from the mire of the past to focus on the move I'm making, let alone try and figure out the next three or four moves in advance. But I feel knowing this about myself is a piece on the board of life and I am learning to use it as a tool.

How does this impromptu game with the boy work into what I was talking about before and how does my mother play into it? Simple, we are all playing chess, only not against each other or fate, but with Life. We are each in our own game, and no one can play on someone else's board. We can combine forces at times and seek out help for our moves, but ultimately, the choice to move, to capture or to sacrifice a piece is sole our own. It is a game we are going to lose, no one gets out of this life alive. Mom, to me, is a woman that has few pieces left on the board of life. A few pawns and her king. She's within two moves of getting one of her remaining pawns to Life's side of the board to liberate her Queen or Rook, but Life keeps her in check. She keeps trying to out maneuver his pieces, but with the ability to move only one square in any direction, only to be put in check on his next move frustrates her and stymies her, but she doesn't declare defeat and lay down her king. Life on the other hand still has almost all of his pieces in play and has a sweeping vista of the board, any plan made by her is perceived and countered several moves in advance, though with the stealth of a jaguar so she doesn't know she has been thwarted until it's too late. Though she has sacrifices a lot of her men in the cause of her children, expecting to have them charge in and not only save her but rebuild her army with their own, but like I said before, we can't play another persons game. Her gambits are too easily spotted and, when offered unsolicited, go unused when offered in order to protect our game.

It is a sad, sad place to be in at her age and I feel a sence of meloncholy for her situation at times. But I, like her, are powerless to do anything about it and strangely enough, that is comforting. This new vision of Life and her role with it has helped me understand her better. Though I can't add pieces to her board to ameliorate the pain and frustration of always being put into check, I don't fee guilty because she doesn't have the pieces on the board any more, nor do I allow her to make me feel like I owe her something because of it. I never asked her to cash in her retirement any more than my sisters asked her or required her to cash in her retirement in order to support them or give them what she thought she wanted them to give her in return. Reciprocity isn't a one to one, dollar for dollar commitment on this temporal plane. (I know it would be nice if it was, but it's not.) I do what I can, the sisters do what they can, but it will never replace the men she sacrificed, it will never give her the full range of the board again. She doesn't have the pieces to plot behind so now when I see that she has finally caught on to the multi move gambit it is just behind her eyes, visible for the world to see, and frustrating for her daughters who sees it and have always been powerless to stop her maniputlations in the past. Now, I don't see them as manipulations, per se, I see them as the desperate attempts of a woman trying to regain control of a board she hasn't seen from corner to corner in several decades. And my heart cries for her.