Life, a game of chess

  We can liken the world we live into a chessboard, one of those cheap cardboard ones, or if we were lucky, one of those beautifully varnished noble wood ones. We are the pieces, we move according to well-defined rules, not too many, but impossible to evade even if we wanted to. Once you enter the game, this usually happens somewhere through adolescence, we have to make the first choice, probably the most important, namely opening the game.

  There are a lot of classical openings, Catalan, English, French, Indian, Dutch, Slavic, Sicilian, Scottish, in various variants, each with its strengths and weaknesses, appreciated or not, depending on the player's profile. We can choose an open, alert game without too many complications, at least for the first moves, or on the contrary, we will play cautiously, closed, placing value from the beginning on stability, on the optimal positioning on the chessboard of life and not necessarily on the immediate material advantage, which sometimes will prove illusory. Sometimes we will choose an opening between the two, neither too much nor too much, Giuoco Piano, a kind of game of confusion in which we do not reveal our intentions until after the few moves in which we have put the opponent's vigilance to sleep.

  Now that we have presented the board and the game possibilities, let's find out who we are. Obviously, we are the pawns, at least in the first phase of the game, we move slowly, step by step, square by square, doing the little things, being useful to the other superior pieces, we are the soldiers in the trenches of the front line. We, the pawns, are the pioneers, and we are proud of it, without us the other high-ranking pieces would not even make a frozen onion. We hope that once and for all if we escape from the "bloody" entanglements in the first line, we reach the other end of the chessboard and then we have completed our mission, we can transform into any other piece we want, except the king, because this it is unique, "le grand ordinateur", as the French would say. Yes, I know, some of you will say that you are not pawns, you are bosses, tricksters, kings, queens or at least turns, anything but the boring pawn. Think again and remember, the higher the value of the chess piece, the more you will be the target of the attacks of the lower pieces that want to take your place. So what do you choose, so at least for the beginning it is better, even more comfortable to be a pawn...

  Whether we play centrally or prefer to develop the flanks, our pawns are meant to protect the other pieces and open paths for their various combinations. Sometimes we'll have our own moments of glory, when we pull off a fork, but usually we'll either stay tactically positioned or advance to support the attack of a superior piece or kamikaze-style for to obtain a positional advantage, for the common good. In this context, it must be specified that the life of a pawn is not at all easy, it involves the assumption of many responsibilities and although it does not seem at first sight, it is not at all burdensome and unimportant.

  For example, let's think about how a day's chess game goes from the perspective of the pawn.

  At home, if you are married, you do everything the queen asks of you, because otherwise you don't even notice how she turns into a horse and jumps into your head with all kinds of reproaches. Those of you who are still celibate pawns, do not rejoice and do not laugh at the trouble of the brother pawn, the day will come for you too when independence will go like smoke. 

  Surely you have or will have a girlfriend, a fiancee, (therefore the first step towards enslavement is already taken) and I assure you that the daughters of these queens far exceed those of the queen who has become a wife.

   We have reached the end of the game, and if we are still alive on the board, even if we have not managed to take the marshal's baton out of the pouch and become a piece stronger than the humble pawn, it is called that we have won the game, we have given life to chess, and we can be proud of that. If only (or perhaps precisely) because we can say without fear: "I was a man, that is, a fighter", said Goethe, a guiding rook of universal culture.

“At the end of the game, the king and the pawn end up in the same box.”