PhotoCredit: Flamin
I have often likened squiggling to trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle - without the picture on the box and with all the pieces turned upside down. Possibly slightly dramatic but many days feel this way: overwhelmed by where to start let alone clear where you are going.
I recently dabbled in the world of dissectology. That is a sentence I never imagined writing. Puzzlers are evidently also called dissectologists as the origins of jigsaw puzzles were dissected maps. A girlfriend of mine had a 1,000 piece puzzle freshly out of the box and I couldn’t help myself. Immediately, what seemed relatively simple became hard. All the pieces blurred into one. In seconds it seemed impossible. “How do I tackle this?,” I thought to myself - somewhat curious and amused that a puzzle of dog breeds was making me feel overwhelmed.
According to the internet, the broader term for a puzzler is enigmatologist. This includes solvers of other non-jigsaw puzzles and other math and logic head-scratchers. For your complete education it seems these words are often used interchangeably. Who knew? Well, now you do.
Anything with the root word “enigma” sounds seriously cool. And what is this thing we call life if not an enigma: “a person or thing that is mysterious or difficult to understand.” There is great joy on the other side of a puzzle. Mystery, jigsaw or otherwise - enigmatologists and dissecologists approach a problem with delight in the challenge. They are not overwhelmed by the deep hole of the difficulty or the thousand pieces laying in front of them.
Finding the joy in the challenge is the real game. The joy comes from tackling something because it’s hard. Perverse, maybe, but this is where resilience is born. When we know something is difficult, we know it will stretch us, and we go for it anyway. We go for it knowing there is a possibility we could fail. We go for it despite the fear lurking, dismissing the little-loud voice that tells us we can’t.
With my jigsaw puzzle encounter, I realised I just needed to find a place to start. I found one part of the puzzle that looked approachable and collected all the pieces for that element. Through much trial and error I finally got there. It was only 5% completed but the small victory gave me great confidence I could tackle the rest. Overwhelm begone. A winning formula for puzzles, mysteries and life.
The story would be a lot cleaner if I finished the puzzle but it wasn’t actually mine to finish. So, I left the rest for my friend. If only we could do that with all of life’s complexity...but where would the joy be in that?