Life… oh life… oh life
Interesting fad in the office right now… Puzzles. =P
I’ve always liked puzzles. I guess I inherited it from my dad. He used to buy Dell puzzle magazines all the time and solve various puzzles. Sometimes I’d steal into one of them and solve the easy ones. In time I managed to do some of the more difficult ones… now I’m the one who buys them when I suddenly have the urge. =P
Of course my favorite puzzle of all time, and I guess one of my "secret" talents is the Rubix cube. From grade school to college I’ve practiced, memorized and improved various patterns that I’ve encountered. Though I don’t get to practice much lately, I believe I can still get good times when I solve it. There are times when I try to remember what moves I did when I encountered, and I can’t manage to remember them if I’m not holding a cube, but when I see it I just suddenly know what to do.
An officemate of mine commented when she found out that I solve the cube, and she said that it’s easy because patterns are available. You just follow them and you’re done. I do not deny, I am guilty of that fact. Out of all the sequences I do, only one or two are original, and I can say that they are even just derived from other sequences I have encountered.
Then I thought… Aren’t all puzzles like that? There are various patterns… In Sudoku it’s crossing out numbers… in Kakuro it’s looking for what I call "hot numbers" or those that only have one combination of numbers. Math problems, may they be word problems or whatever, usually have that technique to solve them, which may be considered a pattern. In some cases, it’s a very crucial key, where a very difficult problem suddenly becomes so easy after finding it. I guess this is what makes solving the cube special… Anyone can learn the pattern, but how fast you can see it, how fast you implement it, knowing the right pattern to do, how decided you are in doing it… That’s what makes one an expert on it.
And then, I realized… One’s whole life can actually be seen as a puzzle. Problems encountered everyday can be compared to various patterns, may it be personal experience, or stories by other people. As with the rubix cube, some patterns may become instinctive due to good habits (or bad vices? lol). When you think about the situation, you may not know or forget what to do when you encounter it, but when it comes face to face with you, you know what to do. Anyone can live life to the fullest as long as they have learned the "patterns" of life. It’s up to us on how fast we can react, knowing what to do with them, and deciding to do them, when those patterns come.
LOL… I guess I just think about it too much… Which leads to another discussion, our team building in Nasgbu just this previous Saturday. I’ll post pics when I get them… haha
There was a part there where you find out what your dominant work trait was. I forget the terms they used… all I remember was that one trait is the aggressive just do work attitude, another is the get many friends attitude, another is the OC/try to be constant about things attitude, while the last is the perfectionist/analyzing attitude. My dominant attitude was of course the last one. (Which is prolly the reason why I’m making a post analyzing all these XDDD).
Then I start to wonder… I know that one’s personality is a mix of those different attitudes, only some may be stronger than the others. The handler explained this at the start. The exercise determines which are the stronger ones, but I realized, it does not determine how strong they really were. It was all comparison with the other traits, but how truly dominant one was or how OC one was… It was not determined. I thought about it because I knew I was a mix of all the traits, but how strong was I on those that were weak compared to my perfectionist/analytical side?
Anyways I guess I better stop now before I start to think about things too much ^_^ Whatever they mean… I hope I just made sense =P Life truly is a puzzle… haha
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:12 pm
hi! i enjoyed your article. i believe in the whole “there is a pattern” thing. now, that i’m working, i’m trying to figure what are the patterns here that i could anticipate and eventually benefit from.
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:17 pm
Bravo! First time I’ve read your blog… never knew you were so philosophical.
November 27th, 2006 at 6:56 am
Life truly is a puzzle but that makes it fun and enjoyable. But I don’t think that life has a pattern. Because if there is, what for is our WILL? hehehehe
Am I right?
November 27th, 2006 at 8:43 am
Wow… surprisingly people are reading my blog ^_^
Thanks for the comments…
@Jay Jay: The WILL lets us decide whether we shall do the solution or not. Thing is, even if we are shown the pattern and it’s so obviously clear in the front of our face, we can still say “No” to the solution. It’s stupid, yes, but sometimes we (all of us, including me) are not aware that we fall for such things.
Going back to the math problem analogy, let’s say we encounter it in an exam, we have all the liberty to just say “No” and not answer the question. We also have the liberty to choose whichever solution we want to solve the problem, which may not be the best or the fastest, but it gets there nonetheless. We may also sometimes fall into despair in answering the problem and just give up (different from just saying “No”).
Point is: Even though there are guides out there that tell us what the WAY is supposed to be, what the solution is supposed to be, even though life is composed of patterns, from simple to complex, we still retain the power to choose.
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:38 am
See, if we still have the power to choose then there’s definitely no pattern. There will always be deviations. All of us will only see the pattern if and only if we do the same things over and over again. If life has patterns, then some or most of us would be doing the same thing. But all of us are unique and so we live our lives uniquely. If there are patterns, then no one is unique. The rest of my explanations will come next time!
December 10th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Ah, but as I never said we always follow the pattern. I said there are patterns, but it’s not necessary that we should follow, which is different from saying that we all follow the same pattern.
But I’m not saying that we should not follow. Actually, we should.
Let’s cut the analogies and jump to real life… At work: Even though we have different work habits or work loads or work descriptions, there is that pattern which we must try to follow, and that is “We must do our work well.” Let’s say in the law… Lot’s of different situations where you may get apprehended or such, but they all point to having the same solution, which is “Obey the law”. In courting a girl… Even though each girl is different from the other, there is one main point: “Show the girl that you love her.”
Point is: Our set of options and situations may make us unique, but there is always that set of guidelines that we must try to follow.