Moving On

Growing up, I was enthralled with Chess once I learned how to move the pieces. My mother will tell her friends and anyone that will listen that I beat her at Chess at age 9. She will also tell you that I hid socks in my toybox. But I am not here to write of the socks of Taran's toybox. And then again, maybe I am. It's one of those odd moods that has me writing this night, a night where a day of looking over the belongings that mark my presence here has caused an odd form of nostalgia.

The nostalgia isn't for the things I've had. In my life so far, I've had a lot of things; I've also had very few things. 'Things' seem to disappear for me; their presence lost as their usefulness passes. But what they teach me is not lost; and when they do not teach me anything new it is time for the things to leave. Moving as much as I have - perhaps as much as I will - has a freeing quality. What you cannot carry, you leave. What you cannot use, you do not carry. This might seem like some odd attachment disorder to some psychologist (a person studying psychology so that they can save themselves), and they might be right. Maybe I have an 'attachment disorder'. Or maybe I have an 'detachment order' - a play on negating 'attachment disorder' which leads to interesting thoughts. A detachment order, per se, is a prioritization. Triage. In this life, we carry what we can and carry no more.

And we move forward move by move. And every move, we must plan what we carry for the next move.

I used to be very good at Chess; I may still be though I haven't played in a long time. But being good at chess isn't some magical thing; it's about knowing what will happen next - and plotting a future out of vague possibilities and conjecture. Paul Morphy was one of my idols when it came to chess - until I read his biography, 'The Pride and Sorrow of Chess' by David Lawson. The book became a victim of triage, and yet I remember the last sorrowful chapters of that book so well. The man, the legend, abandoned by would-be clients for having principle. Perhaps beyond Morphy's definition of the 20th century grandmaster, he helped define failure of lawyers in the 20th century based on having principle. I digress.

So part of life is triage. Everyone practices it to some extent, but I have been accused of being adept at it - even unfeeling. I do not agree with that. I think that there is only so much feeling that one can have, and squandering that feeling among numerous possessions dulls the joy of feeling. But oh! How we miss something we need when we have held it in our hand and knowingly left it behind. We chide ourselves for having lost it at our own indiscretion, yet it was not a true indiscretion when it happened. It was only a potential indiscretion, based on what we saw as 'moves ahead' on our own chessboards.

Chessboards are a good start at understanding life, but are a shallow mimicry. In life what may appear as a bishop may well be a knight, a King may in reality be a pawn and a pawn may indeed be the future King. Why do the feminists not scream about the Queen being perceived as the most powerful piece on the board? Perhaps because they do not understand that the King is the most important piece; that there is no game with a missing King. It took 15 years of my playing to figure that out. Nights spent playing myself for lack of playing anyone else; experimenting. Computer chess programs - discarded in triage - beaten, with nothing more to teach.

In time, a progression of moves becomes apparent. Things reveal themselves earlier in a game based on experience and possibilities. So it is with life itself - and many of the facets of life. The more you live, the more you can see. A person who lives in one place for their entire life probably gathers a feel for where they live, predictability leads to a comfort for them which I would probably perceive as a monotony - and monotony is my poison. Perhaps in time I shall seek comfort in that poison.

In chess, the King is the most important piece. In life, we are our own most important piece. At times, other pieces have greater roles than ourselves, but in our own little chessboards we play a game to protect our king, or more importantly - what we perceive our king to be.

Would that our centre of life were static and that we knew it from the start - but we cannot, because that is the nature of life. Where life does not end, it moves on. The important pieces from yesteryear, yesterday, and the last split second - these pieces are temporary. And to each other, we too are temporary. The period with which we are temporary - well, that's another story.

So in life, either grow stronger to carry more, or discard what you cannot carry. Perhaps it would be better to do both. Maybe that's the real growth; the potential to carry more to another level.