The World Played Chess

by Robert Dugoni

Someone once said that failure is easier to live with than regret, and it pierced my heart like an arrow.

Because William taught me that you can’t expect to be treated as a man if you act like a child, and that every life is precious and can be lost in an instant of stupidity or bad luck. He taught me not to waste the opportunities I had, because so many young men never had a chance at them, never had the chance to grow old.

“I joined the marines because I believed they were badasses, and I figured if I was going to go into a fight, and I was, I wanted to go in with the meanest fuckers on the planet. I didn’t want the guy next to me to hesitate when the shit hit the fan. I wanted someone I could trust to have my back.”

I was trained not to think about consequences. I was trained to fight whoever was there.”

My children’s reaction is proof that you must experience some things to fully appreciate them, and to not make the mistake of doing them again.

I thought of the army recruit William had described to me that summer, the one so easily indoctrinated that he would run into a wall over and over until he knocked himself out. And when he regained consciousness, his superiors would pin a medal to his shirt and he’d wear it with great pride, or maybe frame it and put it on the mantel, and never know that thousands of other guys had the very same medal, for doing the exact same thing, but not one of them had ever succeeded in knocking down that wall.

The world is playing chess and you’re playing checkers. It’s going to piss all over you.”

It was part of growing up. It was part of realizing you don’t know a damn thing about the world, that at times, you weren’t even playing the same game.

Sometimes bad luck is really dumb actions or inaction. You can make your own luck by making smart decisions.”