As I survey the granite battlefield on top of my black walnut desk, the carnage is, to be blunt, breathtaking. One lone white king, utterly deprived of any other allies on the entire board, sits surrounded by my queen, two knights, one bishop and two pawns. My king, four other pawns and both castles are simply sitting back as if casual observers to the devastation.
My daughter, an absolute genius, nonetheless did not do so well after challenging me to an impromptu game of chess last night before our family conversation and prayer time. To be fair, she has only played once or twice before, and it has been many years since she has even done that. Given her ultra-high intelligence, with some practice and guidance, I have no doubt that she would be a formidable opponent.
I am a reasonably good chess player, I suppose, though certainly not a Kasparov or anything of the sort. But any seasoned chess player of any skill level probably could have predicted the way the game was going to go within the first half-dozen moves on either side. You see, my daughter immediately set about trying to take my king. She seemed to have the notion that the goal of the game is to take the crown with the barest minimum of time and effort, simply bypassing everything else along the way.
And that is the exact opposite of the way I tend to play. While, in theory, I do have the ability to take a king in fairly short order, I recognize it for the fool’s errand that such an attempt normally is. It may work once in a very rare while, but for the most part, it just loses games for you. My preferred methodology of play, therefore, is to pick the smaller pieces off one by one until, at best, my opponent has just the king and a pawn or two left to him. I can then safely checkmate the king at my leisure.
When I woke up this morning, I was still musing on that game. It seemed to me to be such a good example of how far too many people in this generation view life and success. Where older generations understood the concept of entry-level jobs, working their way up and saving and investing for the long term, the mindset of our day seems to eschew that “old-fashioned” methodology.