Steve West - The puzzle of the world

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 4th. Good morning! You’re listening to The World and Everything in It and we’re so glad you are! Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Here’s WORLD commentator Steve West on the philosophy of jigsaw puzzles.

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: My favorite puzzles are the kind other people “work,” because that’s what it is to me: work. When I look at a tabletop of 1,000 ragged, zig-zagged colored cardboard cutouts, I’m lost. My wife, on the other hand, is enchanted by the thought of a new puzzle to pore over. She sets up a table by the window and opens up shop. Leave her alone for a minute, take your eye off her, and there she is bent over the table, puzzling her way to a completed picture—a print of blooming flowers, cityscape, or animals. All the little gaps of her day are filled with puzzling.

It’s a silent activity. There’s no humming satisfaction that attends it, no singing, no sighing of frustration, no exclamations of glee at finding the missing piece. Just a quiet joy, a dogged determination, a resilient spirit, a patient trying, trying, trying and succeeding, God mending the fabric of creation, disorder to order, chaos to creation.

I ask her what she likes about puzzles, about the pointless waste of time and unending frustration (well, I keep that last bit to myself). She says, “I like the satisfaction of finding the right piece, working with my hands.” She doesn’t even look up as she says this, the task before her.

Although there are a thousand other things I would rather do, I appreciate part of why she loves it so much. The disassembled puzzle on the table is a problem a little god can fix. Most of the big ones require a bigger God, the God. Despite the fact that utopian schemes abound, humankind is not evolving to perfect peace and happiness and bliss. We can’t fix the people around us, remedy human imperfection. We can’t fix ourselves. That requires a better puzzler.

The other day, I watched her begin again. She spread all the pieces out on the table. She brooded over the deep, over the chaos, until light came. She pulled back her hair so she could concentrate, putting on her placid but serious puzzling face. Her hands moved over the pieces, trying one, then another, until she heard the subtle click of a fit and the world sighed just a bit. A strand of hair broke free and traced her face, but she ignored it in her deliberation. Starting with the periphery, she built a frame for this new world, finding the edges and corners. Over time, it began to take shape. I sensed hope and promise, a time when all things fit.

And then, a few days later, she finished. Leaning back, she rested from her work. I could almost hear her say, “It is good. It is very good.” I admired her work, my hand resting on her shoulder, and smiled at her pleasure. It’s a start on the puzzle of the world.

I’m Steve West.

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