A single game of chess

Patience has never been a virtue that came easily to me. I like things now, preferably five minutes ago, unless it's something I have to do, and then I'll get to it later.

The only time that I can recall patience feeling perfectly natural was when I sat next to Mr. H in class many years ago. Fate put me at his table, and for a quarter we bonded over being smart and having a professor who was condescending, vague and often flat wrong. He was with someone else at the time, as was I, and I was possessed by the entirely new feeling of "want, but can wait for it." I had an unshakable confidence that he would come back around when the time was right, and everything would happen as it was supposed to. A lot has happened since then, a lot has changed, and all of it has built from that moment of patience and made my life better.

I was playing a game of chess with a friend a while back, and we were analyzing my strategy. He noted that I was not playing aggressively. I saw that I was expecting not to win, which was reasonable since I'm still essentially a beginner who has just enough game to be moderately irritating at times, but not a threat. But it was the intent, the playing to mitigate defeat that was interesting. I wasn't even trying for what I wanted because I already assumed i couldn't have it, so I drew myself a little circle of what was reasonable and tried to aim for that. Standing outside talking about the game I was floored as I realized this has been my entire approach to life. For all the talk I give about not limiting my universe to what I see, but leaving the possibilities open for everything there is, I was still playing to mitigate defeat. That single game of chess shook me to my core as I realized that I'm never going to get what I want if I don't try. I may not get it even then, but I'll get closer than if I stayed home. And I know from experience that often the thing I think I want is really the carrot to get me out the door to the other place I need to be that's along the way.

There's something else I want now. I see that I've been playing the game the way I know, the way I always have, because that's where I was then. I've been ill at ease, reaching for something because the old solutions weren't working anymore. I see now that my goal has shifted, that I've allowed myself first to admit that I even want the thing I've always convinced myself I couldn't have, and then I come to find that I've built my life around people with similar goals. There was one last place I was applying the rules of the old game, and I finally see that what I was trying to get there was what had worked in the past. The lessons I needed to learn, the experiences I needed to have, the growing I needed to do *then* have all brought me to *now,* and for the first time since I sat in that classroom, I'm content to wait. I know what I see in my future, and where there was anxiety filling the space between with idle action and relationships to distract me from the thing I couldn't figure out, now there is peace at holding a space, because I know what goes there now. I had a void, and was trying to fill it with things that worked before. Now I see not an emptiness, but a place of light and air and welcoming.

When the benefits are temporary, it doesn't matter if I play from the hip. I'm building a home now. In the stories, when men want to prove their love or honor, they hunt dragons and quest for impossible items and generally go *out* to prove themselves. They never talk about what the women do, it seems we just sit there looking pretty waiting to be won. But I don't want heroes, I want partners, and so I go on my quest inside, clear my hearth, warm myself and hold space for when those dear to me decide to come home.