By Alyssa Velazquez
Elm Staff Writer
If everything underneath you was black and white, your designated space was a confined perimeter of four 90 degree angle boundaries, and your opponents surrounded you, would you still play alone?
You find you are in an endless game in which each player fights to stay alive; always calculating, always psychologically second guessing motives, and pre-meditating your opponents’ actions. No one is truly looking for a title or medal, yet nevertheless the battle continues. An abstract conflict in which each individual player, move after move, is looking for the opening in his or her opponents’ strategy, the flaw, in order to commit the ultimate act.
Checkmate.
Looking at chess from an existentialist point of view, it doesn’t take long to see the striking parallels between a board of game pieces and the layout of relationships. We, regardless of gender, cannot deny that there are certain perimeters in which we play, personal limits, and expectations that we expect to be met.
Yet, what of our relationships? When do all these perimeters, limits, and expectations start to form the rules of a game in which we are the opponents to our own significant other? Is a relationship in actuality a mutated chess match? If so, is the ultimate goal the same: to force the king to surrender or a slightly lesser conquest: to check your mate?
With any long distance relationship, communication is key. Regardless of proximity, familiarity to each other’s everyday happenings is vital. For most, this complication can be solved with a simple phone call, text, or one of the many Internet related modes of communication. For a trans-continental relationship, laden with inhumane calling fees, the Internet is often the only and last resort.
This is how it shaped out for me after my departure from Egypt.
I had never been a convert to the concept of Skype. Along with tweeting and blogging, I saw it as a continued movement away from direct human interaction to isolated contact and fabricated connectivity. It was only through the constant urgings of my friends and family during my time abroad that resulted in me making a Skype account. It has since proven to serve not only to satisfy their initial pleas but also the game board for my current relationship.
Unlike most girls my age, I categorize myself as an old-fashioned gal partial to outdated customs in relationships (which is partly due to the over exposure I received to Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable as a little girl) including the idea that the initial contact call is to be made by the man.
In my case, that personal principle couldn’t be enacted due to international cell phones and I had to be the one to make the first trans-continental call.
Then came Skype.
With Skype the game board was cleared, he could contact me and I him, except of course when the seven-hour time difference or our college workloads weren’t getting in the way. Despite my stubbornness, whenever I signed on to Skype I would check to see his current status: offline, online, away, or even busy at the moment, didn’t matter which one it was I would become defensive.
I would be online yet refuse to call him. Waiting for his next move, I would go through potential game plays: would he call, decide to message, or simply ignore my online presence.
Did his selection of contact reveal the degree of affection he had towards me? At moments when we were both on Skype, was he going through the strategies that I was?
In addition, I refused to write an email or even send him a catch-up message on Facebook. I couldn’t help thinking that if he wasn’t going to make an effort, why should I? Which brought me to many trains of thought in terms of games and relationships.
If relationships are the playing fields for a series of cryptic chess matches what are we really playing for? Is it power, morals, or ideals? What is it about humans in a monogamous relationship that makes checking our mate so important?
Today, I continue to play a game of relationship chess via Skype, Facebook, and e-mail along with my fellow opponent.
Currently, in my own love life both King and Queen are at a standstill, and perhaps that’s the deviation in the concept of relationships as chess matches.
Relationships are not black and white, nor are they easily confined to a square. There are no set rules, and making personal strategies against your fellow partner in the end only prohibits both the King and Queen from moving across the board.
March 4, 2011
Volume LXXXI Issue 17