Chess Piece, Wooden Desk

I still keep a silly chess piece on my desk.

It’s from a game I played against my ten-year-old brother. I cream him every time we play, though there was one game where he tried a new strategy and it cost me this single pawn. It reminds me that, even in situations where I’m at ease, I can still learn from everything around me, whether it’s an insignificant pawn or a sneaky little brother. The other seemingly ordinary objects I have in my bedroom also epitomize this fact.

This includes the old wooden desk in the corner of my room that belonged to my grandma. Its sturdy drawers house my arsenal of fine writing instruments—tools I use because excellence reveals itself in details as simple as the crispness of a line of ink. Two ancient Roman coins reside in a small blue box next to my piggy bank. These remind me that to contribute to humanity’s future I must be well-versed in its past. A gray bookcase houses my favorite works of literature (the most well-worn are fantasy and science fiction) with everything from enormous volumes of colorized photos from World War II to Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings—an exploration of the foundations of leadership. Just as I have learned from concrete events in the past, I’m also drawn to imaginative settings in which we can envision future technologies or evaluate the hypothetical to study human tendencies.

Glass cases on one wall contain hundreds of model soldiers I’ve painted over the years with, of course, historically accurate uniforms. Each soldier is a testament to the precision of cutting each tiny piece, the patience in gluing them together, and the control in applying each stroke of paint with a careful artist’s eye. As I look around my room, I’m reminded that for years I’ve been fascinated by how conflict erupts among humans—and what we learn from such destruction.

My uncle’s 1960s Hamilton manual-wind watch lives in a leather box on my dresser, though it also lived through the Vietnam War, my parents’ wedding, and the 9/11 attacks. It reminds me that the greatness of creation is not fully realized today, but rather in the quality of workmanship that persists decade after decade.

And yet—

And yet, I would let these treasures burn to a crisp without hesitation.

That is, everything but the picture of my dad and me holding squirt guns on our first camping trip. It’s not the photo, but instead the envelope securely taped to the back that truly matters. It reads, “For Paden Jacob Nichols. Do not open until 2028” in my dad’s handwriting. I don’t know anything about this envelope: I don’t know why I have to be 26 before I open it, I don’t know why it’s with that particular photo, and I don’t know what’s inside. It is the elusive truth of what it contains that intrigues me. Perhaps it’ll tell me that I was adopted, which would explain why I don’t look at all like my full-Filipino mother. Maybe it has a secret map to my great-grandfather’s long-lost collection of prized literature. It’s not unlikely it’ll just have an expired one-day pass to Legoland.

Whatever dwells within the confines of this envelope is of minor concern. Rather, it’s the thrill of pondering the possibilities that excites me. This isn’t optimism, but curiosity. I am curious by nature and a learner at heart. This envelope encompasses the idea that I’ll never know all the answers, and that I’m okay with that. To be a learner is to search for answers knowing they will only lead to more questions. To be intellectually curious is to be absolutely exhilarated by this prospect. So, to look around a room full of objects I have known intimately and ask what is most valuable to me demands an unhesitant answer:

It is that which I know nothing about.