Jigsaw Puzzles: A Manifestation of My Childhood

The brown and white horse tucked back into his stall, and my child-appropriate jigsaw puzzle finally reached completion. As I outgrew the 25-piecers and worked my way up to 1000-piece grand-size puzzles, I continued to enjoy putting things together into a whole. Intending to create an underwater scene, I started off with corner pieces, initially forming a sea of blue waiting to join the vibrant reefs, lush seaweed, and a wide assortment of tropical fish. After grouping together all of the grays, greens, and oranges, the sharks, seaweed, and fish began to make an appearance. Unity emerged from disorder as I focused on the picture on the box and found the slider pieces, ignoring color shades for the moment.

This formed only the beginning of my passion for puzzles in general. As I started growing up, I became obsessed and emerged into the complex depths and wonders of puzzles — so much that people started calling me “crazy” and started sleeping past bedtime. One day, I finally crossed all limits of craziness when I finally received a one thousand-piece puzzle set for my birthday. The next day, I set an alarm to wake up at 5:50 AM and sped through my daily morning routine. I set to work at 7:00 AM. I started with the corner pieces and slowly assembled the outside border of the puzzle, paying close attention so that adjacent pieces matched and fit perfectly. I finally finished the border at around noon. Swallowing most of my lunch without chewing, I quickly jumped back to where I left off. To help myself sift through the pile of remaining puzzle pieces, I spent most of my time afterwards organizing the pieces based on the picture they represented (e.g. all the blue pieces that looked like the ocean went in one pile, all the green pieces with pink spots that looked like trees went in another separate pile, etc.). From that point onwards, I worked nonstop until the next day, not getting a wink of sleep at night or realizing it to be 5:12 AM when I finally completed it. Heheheh, good time!

While this may seem like a punishment to most, I strongly regard it as my version of “fun” and relaxation. As portrayed by my life experience, puzzles require a massive amount of patience and determination. If one lacks either one of these two traits, then, quite frankly, he/she will never master problem-solving, whether it be in a “puzzle setting” or in an academic sense (e.g., find a shortcut to solve the fiftieth derivative of x2). Understand it takes time to achieve this ability, but if you put your heart and soul into creating the final product, then you’ll finally call yourself the “puzzle master” (as I had been so called those days).