Puzzling as life may be, solutions can be close at hand

A stroll through the hutong near Beijing's Drum Tower, which once sounded out the hours for the ancient city, is always like stepping back in time.

But on one recent crisp winter night, during a walk through a well-traveled alley there, I found myself suddenly transported back to my childhood years, half a world away.

I was headed toward one of the area's two excellent CD/record stores, when a display in a shop window caught my eye. In the dawn of the Year of the Tiger, there hung a surreal painting, I assumed, of a tiger and several domesticated cats standing on hind legs and obviously celebrating Chinese Lunar New Year.

Upon closer inspection, I realized the painting was a jigsaw puzzle, and the shop was devoted to such puzzles. When I stepped inside, the store's toasty warmth could hardly have outdone the rekindled fires in my heart and memory.

Long ago, in my quiet hometown on the other side of the planet, my siblings and I, on long summer days, well before the advent of cellphones and video games, whiled away the afternoons solving, piece by countless piece, jigsaw puzzles of colorful waterfalls and other natural wonders.

Many decades later, as I browsed in Beijing through shelf after shelf of puzzles, which included anywhere from just a handful of pieces to 1,000 or 2,000 and more, I wondered: Could assembling them today possibly be as exciting as in bygone years?

Indeed, the two puzzles I purchased, with a mere 600 pieces each, were just as fun as those of yesteryear. But I found that I'd accumulated skills over the decades that prepared me to better meet the challenge now and appreciate the profound value of this pastime.

In perplexing moments while assembling the puzzles and searching endlessly for the proper piece, I often found myself wondering if perhaps I had lost a piece, or maybe my cat had pilfered one, swatting it about until losing it under the refrigerator. By and by, though each piece had already been carefully scrutinized, the mystery piece suddenly materialized and seemed so obvious.

An eagle's eye for nuanced color matches or tiny distinguishing details was required, aided by keeping the puzzle's box top close at hand for reference in the often frustrating search for just the right piece.

An insight by US advertising executive James Webb Young proved helpful. He wrote years ago in his book A Technique for Producing Ideas that, to effectively solve a problem, we need to work diligently, of course, but also must eventually rest, at which time the subconscious mind continues seeking a solution and, inevitably, surprises us with an appropriate answer when least expected. So when the puzzles seemed impossibly perplexing, I simply took a break, returned refreshed, and quickly found the piece that had long eluded me.

Among the valuable lessons and rewards that these puzzles offer is that patience and perseverance are enhanced. But what is most beneficial is how, like the detective Sherlock Holmes, we look for answers or clues, working tirelessly to find the perfect fit. It's an approach that pays off when confronting any challenge that life presents.

No matter how flustered we get, we can rest assured of one thing: The answers to our problems are probably not under the refrigerator or even in the vast world outside, but often can be found right under our nose. That is, if we can persevere until the solution becomes almost embarrassingly obvious.