Rewarding Possibility

Finally back at the Manor, after a grand sojourn with the Compte de Rienville that involved some ballooning and barging in Belgium (among other things). So relaxation was in order, and this involved a challenging chess game with my butler and minder, Irving. He had used the Reti opening, and I was pondering the Traxler Variation in response when my gardener Consuela and her husband (and my handyman) Ahmad burst in with two pieces of news.

"We're going to have a baby!" said Consuela ecstatically.

"Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize!" said Ahmad, less ecstatically, but still with some fervour.

I doubted a causal relationship between these two events, but offered my congratulations on the first announcement, and said I would have to think about the second.

"Of course," said Consuela, "there will be the child's education to consider. Now a good Catholic school would be nice....And my little girl would look so cute in a white blouse and kilt..."

"Well," said Ahmad, "a boy can really profit from a good Muslim education..."

" A yeshiva never hurt anyone," put in Irving.

At that point I fled, muttering again that when religion tends to creep into a conversation, everything deteriorates faster than Lindsay Lohan in the grip of Grey Goose vodka. I wound up in my study, slammed on Shostakovich's Fifth (inner turmoil matching outer turmoil and all that) and pondered the giving of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama.

It was, I thought, strange, and established an odd precedent. If grammatical terminology be used, this was the future conditional tense rather than the past perfect. Other winners had all done something, whether the winners were people -- Lester Pearson, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, or poor Aung San Suu Kyi, (still in the grip of those thugs in Myanmar) or organizations such as Medicins Sans Frontieres. Even Henry Kissinger won, although I would be loath to let the man win anything. Obama has yet, in my opinion, to do.

Another oddity came to mind. Did the Nobel Committee award the prize for the simple reason that Barack Obama wasn't George Bush? And would future prizes be awarded on the grounds of who you were not? The possibilities here are endless. Will the person who next comes to power in Zimbabwe get a prize for not being Robert Mugabe? Will the next ruler in North Korea get one for not being the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. You see what I mean.

Finally, I thought, the decision might be more based on hope than any thing else. And perhaps this is OK. After all, as in chess, it will be the end game that matters. And one should not forget that humans are smarter than people think.