64 Checkered Squares

I used to play chess quite a bit when I was much younger man. I played for my high school (I was that cool) and it was one of the few things I could hold my own in from time to time. Like most games, you learn a lot about yourself as a person and about life.

As a youngster, I had real difficulty sorting through how life worked. I just couldn't put it together to save my life. As such, I grasped for anything that I could use as a model. Chess somehow managed to fit. It was logical, which meant that it had comprehensible reasons for everything. There were definite rules that were inflexible that reduced variation. An opponent sat across from me, something that I felt was present at all times in life.

Once I've aged a bit, I've learned that things aren't like chess at all. You can't go around looking at logic for the answers to everything. People are driven by other things. This is what distinguishes us from the silicon machines we use to write and respond to blog posts. And because of this, making all the right moves 100% of the time doesn't guarantee victory, something which I've learned, often through the hard way.

It's something hard to reconcile, since a logical and refined world is easier to comprehend and sort through. As someone who has no clue about the rules of engagement, it's like grasping at straws or trying to devise a strategy for a game of which the rules are not defined.

Then again, who would really want to live a life that could be boiled down to 64 checkered squares?