WE ARE EITHER KINGS OR PAWNS. (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Who is a king? When analysing who a king is, we can never do so without talking about the fact that such a person has authority and power over some people or a kingdom. We also cannot do without the fact that such a person has power and authority over his subjects as in the people of his kingdom. Not over others but over his subjects in his land. When he or she goes somewhere, they may give him respect due to his power over his people but not due to the fact that he has power over them. Now who is a pawn? A pawn is, when playing the game of chess, not only the most numerous piece but also the weakest which represent peasants or armed pile men. A pawn therefore represents a position of weakness or powerlessness or a position of servitude to a master or a king. So in the above statement we are either kings or pawns it states that we are either at the top of our food chain or at its bottom. Now let’s analyse it from this angle.

A king; you are a king when you are in control and authority over any aspect of your life. So we have people who are kings over other children, wives, parents, emotions, reactions, attitudes, feelings, education, you name it. So the interesting aspect is that we are all kings over various aspects of our lives depending on who we are and what we find ourselves doing at various moments in the worldly life. As we look around, we see brothers who are kings of their academics with CGPA’s of 4.0’s and stuff, kings of emotions who know when and how to show what emotions not stepping out of line and those who don’t allow their emotions to cover their sense of judgment. So kings rule no matter the situations of the thing they have control over and as we know in kingdoms there can be coups and takeovers by the ruled. There are situations in which people who are kings over their emotions are overpowered by their emotions so that these people become slaves of their ex subordinates pawns.

A pawn; pawns are also slaves to some aspects of life, we have people who are pawns to sex, drugs, peers, parents, children etc. the wonderful and also the scary thing about all this is that, we are not either Kings or Pawns, we are Kings and Pawns. I would beg to differ a little from Napoleon. We all have things we have absolute control over and we have things which have absolute control over us. We have people who have absolute control over subordinates at work but their children control them in the house. We have people who have absolute knowledge in the religion but still fornicate. May Allah protect us.

At this juncture, I would like to end here with a little advice, although we are Kings and Pawns, we possess one thing that helps us through it all and that is Choice. We choose our kings and we choose our pawns, we choose who we will bow to and who will bow to us and this ability to choose is what we must capitalise on to get the best out of this world and the next.

May Allah guide us to make the right choices.  Ameen.