Going back to basics

Its being a long while that I actually posted on this blog. This holidays I decided to “go back to basics”. This meant that I spent less time on the Internet and more time with other things. It’s interesting to think about how much time we spend on the Internet and how easy it is to get wrapped up in cyberspace without even realizing how much time has passed. This makes us forget that there is actually a world in which “posting” refers to paper letters sent via the Post Office, where “chatting” actually involves two people physically coming together to have a conversation and so on. As much as we may love the virtual world, we’ve got to admit that life can be very peaceful without it.

So I spent some time building a 1500 piece Jigsaw puzzle. My family and I grew up building puzzles together and we always enjoyed it, but the last time I actually built one myself was probably about 5 years ago. Shoo, how fast time goes.

I had so much fun building the puzzle and at the same time it also taught me so many lessons. Strange that a simple thing like a puzzle can actually have so many life lessons to teach:

õ  Firstly you learn that you really need to have a lot of patience. There’s sorting pieces out, differentiating between edge pieces and middle pieces, finding which pieces go on which place of the puzzle. Before you actually start having fun, a lot of work needs to be done.

õ  Then there’s the foundation. If you don’t have a solid foundation then the rest of your puzzle is not stable, and if you make one mistake then the foundation is not complete and with an incomplete foundation, you have an incomplete puzzle.

õ  Each piece has its appropriate place. If you just put the wrong pieces together (like what I did at times) then that makes the right piece out of place. Each piece belongs to a group, it has the surrounding pieces to keep it in place and make sure its firm, even though all the pieces are part of the entire puzzle.

õ  What you put in is what you’ll get out. If you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing then you can sit for hours and not really get anywhere, but if you have drive and determination and focus on what you are doing then suddenly the puzzle becomes easy, pieces are easily recognisable and you enjoy your task with ease.

õ  You can only see the beauty of the picture once it is complete. Before that you may appreciate the beauty of some parts, but the puzzle looks bare and incomplete and then when the completed picture finally emerges, then suddenly all that time spent on wondering how it will be when its complete seems like nothing because the completed picture stands out and everything makes sense.

Well, those are some of the lessons that I learnt while spending time building a puzzle. Some people might wonder if I’m that bored to actually spend time with something like that, but the lessons are important and a reminder of so many things in life.

Going back to basics is really good and sometimes we need it to help us remember lessons that we’ve learnt long ago and we’ve already forgotten.

There are many things you can learn on the Internet, but there are also many things that you will never be able to learn in cyberspace. I think that we need to have a balance in life so that we are able to take the most out of life that we can.

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday, filled with many important lessons of your own.