For the last few months I have discovered the joy of jigsaw puzzles. It all started when a puzzle table was set up in a corner of one of our residential libraries, and 500 pieces of cut-up cardboard were challenging me to, “Get to it Kid! Put me together!”
After spending so much time at my computer screen during the day, and then relaxing by looking at an even bigger screen on my TV at night, I felt I needed a break. So, instead of watching too many news shows that inform us of the myriad disconnected pieces in our world, I reverted back to childhood, and focused once again on the joy of jigsaw puzzles.
In the meantime, I discovered that I’m not the only person who has returned to puzzles that give the brain a workout. In early 2020, games-maker Ravensburger reported a 370% increase in sales. “It’s kind of a retro- revolution.”
When working on a puzzle, I learned a lot of important things: 1. When a piece looks like it should fit and it doesn’t, it’s not fair play to bang it into place with a hammer. 2. A community puzzle is not a competition. The reward is in the finished puzzle itself. No one, other than yourself is keeping score about how many pieces you have filled into the holes. 3. Racing to the finish does not mean sneaking into the library at midnight to beat others to the goal. 4. Sometimes a “missing piece” has fallen on the floor, or you are sitting on it, and finally 5. A thousand piece puzzle does not fit on a 500 piece table.
I discovered in my research that puzzles offer more than just fun. In 2018 The Journal of American Geriatrics Society found that people who do puzzles saw improvements in mental sharpness. “Technically the brain is not a muscle, but it can be trained like a bicep. The more you exercise your brain, the stronger it gets.” Also, puzzles can improve short term memory.
“Our brain is separated into 2 hemispheres which control different functions. The left brain is more analytical and logical while the right brain is where most of the creativity, emotions and intuitive thinking live. Puzzles are an activity where you engage both sides of the brain in a total mental workout.”
You can also develop better visual-spacial reasoning while figuring out how everything fits together. The fun about working on a community puzzle is that if you get stuck, a jigsaw loving compatriot will come along and find the missing pieces that you have been searching for. And, the nice thing about a stack of puzzle pieces is that you know eventually there is a solution. It’s a rare but clear problem that can be solved— unlike so many of today’s life’s challenges that seem like disconnected pieces.
Deepak Chopra said, “There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here, because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle.” That’s an excellent theoretical thought, and I will ruminate on it, but first I’ll work on the little stack of pieces on the table in my library before I try to figure out exactly where I fit in the universe.
Esther Blumenfeld