Puzzled

Have you ever owned puzzles in your life?

When I was a child, I had a few puzzles, but not the conventional types. I had a cube that came apart and then you had to put it together, but you could also build a king of star out of it, and other shapes, I guess. I also owned a Rubik cube and also an Earth shuffle puzzle (similar to a Rubik) but in the shape of our Planet Earth. I remember trying to reconstitute the cube and trying to shuffle the Earth back to its place. The cube was fairly easy to put together, but when I mixed up the squares on the Earth, that was very difficult then to permute back to its original image, so instead I cheated and took each square off. Yup, I was your typical child who could not cope with failure or losing. I have to thank my mother for that; she was kind of perfectionist or perhaps with OCD tendencies.

When we are children, we are given toys by our parents, by our parent’s parents, by our family members, parent’s friends and we play with them without paying much attention to the purpose of a game or toy.

Have you ever considered why, as a child, you would have been given certain toys?

I guess my parents thought that I was inquisitive enough to be able to solve issues, so they encouraged that in me.

Many people have a difficulty figuring themselves out, not only themselves but also the other human next to them, not only that but perhaps their friendships, their relationships with their boss, find it difficult to take a decision in life.

So, how many puzzles have you put together in your childhood?

How many pieces did you have to find in order to finish the puzzle?

Have you ever owned a shuffle puzzle?

How many steps did it take you to put a puzzle together?

Were you able to project or permute the pieces to such a degree that you could solve the puzzles?

Did you solve the puzzles yourself, or did you ask your parent to help you? Did you get frustrated with the puzzle?

Did you give up on the puzzle?

As human beings, we are being given so many tools in our lifetime, either on purpose or by chance, and some are able to put those tools to great use and some continue to ignore the tools.

In my day job I often have to debate with some of my clients the topic of learning, for quite a few of my clients learning could only occur in school as taught by a teacher, very few can see that learning occurs every day, with every encounter we have, with every new information we pick up, with every observation we make about our external and internal environment. I guess we have to reach a certain level of maturity to be able to recognise that the world around us provides what we need in order to live our best life, as long as we can recognise what tools we need.

Are you puzzled enough yet about the self and YOU specifically?!

Have you managed to identify every piece that makes up the puzzle that is YOU?

Have you reclaimed all the pieces from across all the relationships?

Do other people hold the pieces of YOUR puzzle?

Have you given YOUR power of solution over to someone else?

Do you expect someone else to figure out YOUR puzzle?

Time to take out your diary and take some notes when answering the questions.

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