A Remarkable Life is Like a Game Of Chess, Not Boring Old Checkers

Strategic moves are sometimes required.

As a kid, I used to play a lot of board games. This was well before video games took over the youths of today.

Some games were fun.

Today, I’ll play occasionally with my kids. But when I was their age, I used to play more. On any day, I could spend hours playing these games.

You probably know some of them:

• Monopoly
• Stratego
• Life
• Sorry
• Risk
• Scrabble
• Uno

There were others but then there were two others that I played.

Chess and checkers.

You see, chess is a little harder than checkers. Checkers you can pick up in minutes and start playing.

With chess, you need to spend a little more time, thinking about what each piece can and can’t do. Then you have to think a few moves ahead to beat your opponent.

Checkers is similar, but I think chess is on a completely different level of strategy.

Pick your game

Life is similar to chess and checkers. Every day you get up, go to work and repeat the process. Sometimes you’ll do this over and over again for years at a time.

In most cases, you’re playing checkers.

You have some strategy but you never really do anything too complicated.

But if you want to do something out of the norm, then you’re probably playing chess.

Life is hard. You realize you want to beat this real-life game called life. So you make those tough decisions and you want to win.

Whatever game you play, chess or checkers. Neither one is easy to win.

Each game is hard. But one is harder than the other.

You simply choose the game you want to play.

There is an easy road in life, and then there is a hard road in life. Sometimes the game you play is laid out for you.

Other times, when you want to play checkers, life throws you a curve ball and makes you play chess.

You don’t always get to choose the game you want to play.

This requires you to take a step back and put your brain to work. You’ll make a few more moves you never planned on taking initially.

You’re left with two choices, A or B.

• If you choose A, then C and E can happen.
• But if you choose B, then D and F can happen.

Hopefully, life is that simple. But as you know it never is.

It only gets more complicated and then the following options start to spiral out of control.

This is how you’ve seen life just in the past four years. Life got complicated. It exposed you to things you never imagined you’d see in your lifetime.

• You went to stores wearing a mask
• Kids stayed home and learned from their computers
• Car and home prices started to skyrocket

Then just as soon as things started to return to normal, the price of everything started to go up. You’re still seeing high prices everywhere you look.

Life has not gotten any better. Life has only gotten harder.

One game helps you win

Whether you play life like chess or play it like checkers, both games can help you win. One game, however, can take you much further in life.

This means you’ll need to make some complicated moves.

You need to start planning several steps in advance before you make your first move. Your next move if done incorrectly, could send you backwards instead of forward.

Life has become more complicated than anyone imagined.

Politicians will tell you one thing and say things are fine. But behind closed doors, they know the truth. For some reason, they won’t act on fixing it.

In the United States, politics has become more complicated as people look at the party rather than the people.

Strategy is required

It’s best to sit back and zoom out, and look at your options.

You see just about everything right before you.

However, what lies before you down the road will surprise you if you’re not ready.

The road looks perfectly straight. But along the way, there will be a hidden curve that takes you back to where you started.

This is when you need to do a little more thinking before you make your next two or three moves. The next move could set you back and lose the game.

Life is a series of games you play.

You win some and you lose some.

I don’t know many people who like to lose. I know I don’t.

But sometimes losing helps teach you a lesson or two. Take those losses and learn something from them.

This will only help you the next time you play that game of chess in this game called life.