The past

Years ago I wrote a blog with salacious stories about seducing women, or failing to seduce women - with some degree of reckless abandon. Some of the women I wrote about didn't care, or thought it was funny. Others were probably angry. Maybe I fucked up a few people's lives in some respects - I'm not really sure. I have to face that when I look at the mirror, to forgive myself and hope that others forgive me or forget about me.

That's why they make erasers

Some things seem like big things at the time, and over time they mean less to us. When I was five years old, I remember I had to do some task in class, writing the names of things by their pictures. I was so distressed when I wrote "queen" under the duck picture. I was worried I would get in trouble, disappointing the teacher. She came along, took out an eraser and wiped it all away. She said "okay, try again." Our whole lives are like that in some way. Though it may take many years for us to see the big picture - perhaps it will take lifetimes, but everything works out in the end.

The box and the game

There's a saying, perhaps not so well-known - "at the end of the game, all of the pieces go into the same box." The first person to write that might have meant that we all go in the ground at the end - the box being a symbol for a coffin - but the reason it survives is because it has several meanings. Of course, knowing that you will die one day is a reason to be humble. It's not just that we go into the same box - we also come out of the same box. We were made from the same wood - the same wood which made the box - and we were formed on the same lathe.

Do chess pieces wait in suspense, hoping for the day that they get taken out and played with - animated for a few hours? Do they relish every moment they're on the board - the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat - the despair of regret? And when a pawn is slain, does he die content, knowing that he played an important role in a cosmic game? If a chessman believes that the game is without meaning, does it give its role in the game any less meaning?

If a chess piece doesn't delight in that way, maybe he should. We all have a role to play, though none of us will understand the full meaning, until it's over.

Good luck, and have fun.