Puzzle

This is incident took place over 22 years ago. When I reached the home of my friend Nishta Desai, the maid informed that she had gone out. I sat in the verandah reading the newspapers lying there. When they came back, Nishta went into the living room and promptly rushed out, ‘How did you solve it?’ Seeing my quizzical expression, she pointed out to a jigsaw puzzle.

The jigsaw puzzle was one of pieces of different sizes which had to be joined to form a rectangle that could fit in the box that contained the puzzle. Nishta could not put it together and she thought that I was able to solve the puzzle. Realising that I had not even seen the puzzle, she called out to the maid to enquire whether somebody else had come visiting while she was away.

When the maid replied in the negative, a puzzled Nishta asked, ‘Then who did this?’ and pointed to the box in her hand. The maid was immediately apologetic, ‘Didi, the pieces were lying around. I just put them in the box while cleaning up the room.’ She had cracked the puzzle without even knowing it!

The lesson is simple. Puzzles are often solved without trying to solve them. Most of the complications are just blocks in our own minds. We must avoid getting too competitive such that we focus on every challenge as a race to be won. Stress-free approaches can liberate us.

Too often we look at life’s puzzles and are overwhelmed by their imagined magnitude. To be better at solving life’s puzzles, we must take on challenges as normal interventions and not be overawed by them.

The pieces of the puzzle will fall in place…
if we see every challenge not as a race!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.