The Pawn

I started playing chess a couple of years ago but then completely abandoned it. Only recently, I picked it up again like a bad habit and realized something. So here's a thing about chess- collateral damage is inevitable. You can't expect to win the game with all your pieces intact. So chess is fundamentally the art of sacrificing the right piece at the right time just so at the end of the game, the king takes the glory for doing absolutely nothing at all.   

Though, I wonder sometimes, on what basis can we decide which piece becomes the sacrificial lamb. Most people sacrifice the pawns. It makes perfect sense. They are the ones standing like a wall in front of the more superior pieces. They are available in abundance and do not move as far as a single space at a time. They are quite expendable, actually.

I suppose it happens in reality as well. People who move slowly are used and sacrificed. They are too many in number and far too  expendable to matter  enough to be saved. At the end of the day, the fast movers get to survive. Nobody notices the potential of a single pawn.

But I guess, in the end its not about seeing what people do, but about believing in what they might do if we give them enough time and chance. It's what I've started to believe.  I try to  be patient and give things in my life a chance because even when they do not look so promising, I think they still might have great potential.

And I can say the same for myself sometimes. A lot of times in my life, I've felt like a pawn who's stuck in the cross fire and has absolutely no hope of making it to the end. The weak piece defending the strong ones but I've decided that if I ever feel like that again I'm gonna remind myself of one of the things that I've learnt from playing chess- 

The pawns may be weak when the game begins, but their potential is remarkable. Most of the times, they'll be taken by the other side and help captive until the end of the game- but if you're careful- if you keep your eyes open and protect your pawns, they reach the other side of the board.  What happens then is that the Pawn becomes a queen. Because it kept moving forward and triumphed against the impossible odds, it became the most powerful piece in the game. So when I play chess, I tend to protect a few of my pawns. Because even though, they are slow and quite easy to kill,  the potential of one solitary pawn has the power to change the game.