February 2007

In daily life we are confronted with much we don't not understand. To us so many things can be baffling. How exactly does a TV work? a DVD player? Why do such mediocre people get promoted over me at work? How does a MAC machine tell my card from another? How does the space shuttle shoot up into the sky like that?

A puzzle has many pieces. Can you see them all? Is it hard to figure out how to put them together? Some of us can solve the puzzle quickly, while others will scratch their heads for days and come up with nothing. The puzzle seems like a mystery -- it looks mysterious and untouched by human hands, for most of us at least. And the mystery can seem like a puzzle.

Mysteries are special. The feeling of being caught up in a mystery is awe-inspiring, and magical. How do things connect -- no one admits to knowing! You feel you are walking through a fog where you can't even see the ground. The mystery is powerful: what will happen next!? The mystery seems created by otherworldly forces -- are they spirits, or God, or aliens? ghosts?

Puzzles can stymie even smart people. If most of us can't deal with puzzles, do we have any right to have opinions on them?

Some people write mysteries in book form. Unexplained things happen in them; mysterious things. Are these really just puzzles of some sort?

What do mysteries require of us? We might think we have to little information to delve into the mystery, but maybe we have too much. Too much information -- it's a common problem these days! Too much information leads to too much thinking and before we know it we are nothing but frustrated. And there the mystery sits.

Why all this worry over the difference between puzzles and mysteries one may ask. The distinction is not trivial. Quite to the contrary -- it is very important! Imagine if you were on an important golfing trip, one with important people whom you wanted to impress. Imagine you were preoccupied with a mystery, one that you could not solve, that grew bigger and bigger in your consciousness until it consumed much of your thinking. As you went to tee-off you might think your mind clear but thoughts of the mystery could spark through at any moment, and suddenly -- whack! -- far away trees swallow your disappearing ball, its own whereabouts another mystery introduced! Embarrassment and failure all due to some unrelated, unsolved mystery.

Whereas with a puzzle perhaps your buddies could help you solve it at the clubhouse prior to hitting the course, provided no one withholds information to psych you out and play dirty. It's all so fascinating, how puzzles can come to satisfying conclusions while mysteries often don't!

Now and then we try and try and still can't solve a puzzle, and we're forced to quit -- think of the frustrating Rubik's Cube! It's best left to the pros, we say, as we watch some math whiz come along and effortlessly solve the puzzle. We can't get it -- the solving of puzzles is for math and science heads and other geniuses who got higher SAT scores than we did.

The same goes for the mysteries. We can look at something and look at it and can't for the life of us figure out how it got to be in the state it's in -- we have no clue. We don't even have a starting point. Like the way people centuries ago looked in total wonder at comets and shooting stars.

But along can come a Sherlock Holmes and solve the mystery for us! He wields incredibly deductive powers right before our eyes! To us it might as well be sorcery. The solver of mysteries must be a magician himself.

For us life can be a puzzle, something that grows simpler with the addition of each new piece of information. But often that added information just makes things more complex! There are so many new things we are confronted with on a daily basis that complicate our puzzles -- prostate cancer, Nazi propaganda, celebrity news, missiles in the Soviet Union, strawberry alarm clocks. Too many pieces for the puzzle. A puzzle made more puzzling.

As far as we've come technologically though, there is still much that is mysterious to us, much that scientists, magicians and detectives cannot even explain for us. And these things, these giant mysteries -- it's best that we leave them alone, lest we risk looking a little arrogant and a little stupid by trying to solve them.

Puzzles and mysteries are a dead end for most of us who delve into them. Let's promise ourselves we will try to avoid undue stress and anxiety by no longer worrying about solving puzzles and mysteries. Let's avoid them altogether!

If we come upon a puzzle or a mystery on any given day we will think twice before stopping to take a look. It's what's best for us all!

 

contents © 2007 RAT BLOOD SOUP