The World Played Chess

by Robert Dugoni

Every minute of every day is a gift, and growing old a privilege, not a right.

The world, it seemed, had been busy playing chess, While I had played checkers . . . and ignored the rest.

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

Dying is hardest on the living.

“Never take anything that doesn’t belong to you or that you haven’t earned,” he said, sliding into the car. “You never know who you’re stealing from, and what that money means to them.”

have a nineteen-year-old body with thirty-five-year-old eyes. I am like the pencil I constantly sharpen with a knife; I am just a dull nub of the person I was.