In chess small, small advantages accumulate and determine the outcome. A pawn lost early in the game may lead to a small disadvantage that creates a later loss, and so on.

Slow attrition of the opponent's army is the goal, with accretions accumulating. It is the  strategy one, it seems, develops as one gets older. You no longer try for a home run. Slight, small enhancements of advantage are gained--a little more work here, a small gesture that builds a relationship, remembering to save that receipt, taking that vitamin that may have some slight effect up the line.

Younger adults take larger risks. They make with seem like massively dangerous commitments---irreparable acts having possibly catastrophic financial or personal or health disadvantages, oddly out of proportion aspirations, courses of actions that are not meant to solidify an advantage but to win the contest in a single play. So and so will invest in real estate though knowing nothing about it, this other person will marry so and so in an impetuous hurry because it feels right.

 There is an inverse relationship between age and the amount of risk one can take. As each year goes by, there is more to protect, less to gain, in terms of established relations, resume, career attainments, and bondings with various individuals. If you want to keep a balanced life, there is no time for sudden impulsive efforts that might win the day, bring success or happiness, but also ruin, and, inevitably, a vast expenditure of time. Instead, one chooses the chess like strategy of day to day consolidating, edging, elbowing a little bit, getting position, like the way basketball used to be played. And that is why I sometimes feel sorry for older liberals. Despite some ideals I feel are valuable, their political philosophy suggests that they do not think they have a whole lot to lose, and maybe they don't.