THE KNIGHT, QUEEN AND PAWNS OF LIFE

More often than rarely we start complaining about everything. And no one knows us better than we ourselves, often it so happens that one gets aware of the changes in the thoughts of oneself first.

But the problem lies in the fact that though we recognized what our problem is, we hardly know how to deal with it. Life is like a chess game. We start off with all our pieces, try our best to play and beat the other guy. Putting in a lot of effort to ensure that our moves are correct and we play safe and strategize for everything, trying to figure out and guess the next couple of moves of the opponent. Also, we often have our favourite pieces in the game (mine, for example, is the knight). Then there are the strongest pieces (the ones that help us make the ace moves and subdue the opponent more efficiently) which for me is the queen. Then there are the disposable pawns the loss of which never bothers us. However, we forget that if properly harnessed, a pawn can turn out to become a castle, knight, bishop or even the mighty queen. But hardly do we even try and focus on this when we are about to begin our game.

This happens often with our jobs in particular, when we begin fresh, just out of college and full of enthusiasm. We know what our strength field (pieces) are. We know what are a favourite field (pieces) are. We take a conscious decision to play either our favourite pieces or our strength pieces. For some, both might be the same piece and such people consider themselves and are also considered by their fellow mates lucky.

Like in chess, at times one might win easily and at others, it might take a hell lot of time. Many times there are deadlocks and both players are equally good and there has to be a mutual agreement on the results. And often people learn from each other and improve game by game.

But out of the game, we commit mistakes too. And often what we infer and praise is the end result of the game and the game itself. We start off with a great passion for our jobs, relationships, friendships and all… Soon we plan our next steps one after another. How we shall play our strength pieces and make the scope to play our favourite ones. Then we have plans for our anticipated failures. People who are good with their game even plan for the losses of their favourite piece and their strength pieces.

In doing so we prepare ourselves to brace the difficulties that might pop up at any time in our life. Meanwhile, there is a very important part that we forget - the pawns. People who don’t spend quite some part of polishing their smallest skills and in time of need turn them into their biggest strengths.

Basically what I am trying to say is that when we sit back and analyze a small little thing like a game of chess and then try to put it into the frame of life, we can find striking similarities which can help us know where we went wrong and how alternatively we could have done things… and then bang on! We are ready if ever that challenge comes our way again any number of times.

But as they say, lightning rarely strikes the same spot twice, let alone multiple times…

So the moment you prepare yourself, for one thing, you find a completely different obstacle before you. And then you prepare yourself again... And again... and again! Some in doing so, we prepare ourselves for a whole lot of bouquets of problems that we might face ahead in life. As the saying goes, whenever we fail to face pick ourselves up and go forward, we should remind ourselves of why we started in the first place.

One can only do so much trying to polish their skills and harness their pawns, and making the best use of their strength pieces and making them their favourite pieces too. In the end, a person can only prepare, train and practice for the limits of the mind. Anything beyond that would be out of one’s control. We can hardly do anything about such things. I mean, I can have 1 king and 15 queen pieces and still not win all the time. But that does not definitely mean that we should stop preparing and improving our game.  The key lies in that fact that we simply have to let ourselves focus less on the end result and more on the game. Improvement and not victory must be our motivation. Because once we improve our game today, we automatically win over ourselves of yesterday. And therefore when I play chess, I play with myself. Firstly it rules out the debate of who shall play with the white pieces and who shall with the black ones. Secondly, I can allow myself to take back my moves and change them if I feel so, and finally, no matter what, I am always the winner.

It is very much important that we compete with only ourselves and not others. Because competition with one’s own self calls for introspection (on failures) and brings improvement (on success) while competing with others shall only bring jealousy and depression (on failures) and ego (on success). The former lets you enjoy and understand the game while the later makes you want a favourable end result.

Even if we achieve the top-notch by defeating others rather than uplifting ourselves, such victory would only be temporary and short-lived till the time someone gets better than us. Thus it is always better to let yourself get better than you every time than others.

But if despite all these, you still find yourself in a mess and going south, just close your chessboard, pack all the pieces, set them aside, walk out of the room… go outside, enjoy, feel your presence, give yourself the time you need, and then walk back into the room with grace and then start playing carom!