The rules for Sudoku are deceptively simple. There is a grid with certain numbers already given to you. You must fill in the remaining boxes with the numbers 1-9 without using any digit twice in the same row, column, or block. It’s not math — it’s pure logic. As you work from puzzle to puzzle, you can’t help but catch on to certain logical principles. You find yourself being forced to think correctly. It’s a delightful experience, and I highly recommend it. Throughout my own puzzlings, I’ve kept bumping into truths which bring home little life lessons to me. It’s not so much that I’ve been learning these lessons for the first time, as much as I’ve been seeing and appreciating them in a new context. Here are a few of the sudoku life lessons I’ve come across:
1.) Not all problems are solvable now.
The Game: A box that cannot be figured out now will need to be revisited later. Sometimes I will keep coming back to the same spot with the same unsuccessful results. How is the box eventually filled in? Generally, it happens only after certain other boxes have been solved.
Life: Certain things in life baffle us. How can I learn to manage my time, or cooperate with difficult people, or even read and comprehend Shakespeare? Just because I do not have the answers to my quandaries now does not mean that I’ll never figure them out. I imagine everyone can think of difficulties which had them perplexed at one point in life, but which have since been resolved. Very often we have no idea what “boxes” need to be filled in before we can overcome the hurdles we presently face. God’s Providence takes care of putting those things in our path that are needful for us to grow.
2.) For those who have eyes to see, there are always new insights to be had.
The Game: I was surprised and delighted to keep discovering new strategies and angles of logic in this puzzle long after I thought that I knew all there was to know.
Life: This lesson is even more true in life. As involved as a game might be, it is just a game. I think it is possible to comprehend fully something man-made like a game. However, when we consider the world, our lives, and our purpose, we are examining something that comes from God. His ways are beyond our comprehension. Life is an adventure in which there are always new lights and amazing discoveries to be had. We need never worry about exhausting the truth, goodness, and beauty of this world, which are, as it were, microscopic fractals of God’s infinite Being. “All occupations are at the service of those who contemplate the truth.” (Br. Francis M.I.C.M.)
3.) When we skip ahead, we run the risk of missing something.
The Game: Because I got the hang of the level one puzzles, I was anxious to see how hard level four puzzles were. Would I be able to solve the hardest ones? Well, simply put, no, I couldn’t. Desperation and curiosity lead me to go back to levels two and three. Perhaps there was something I would learn there which would equip me to solve the more difficult puzzles. Voilà! That was precisely what happened.
Life: Some of us wrestle with this thing called impetuosity, which makes us believe we can skip the hard work which lesser beings struggle through. It is like attempting to run without bothering to learn to walk. Generally speaking, this sort of approach to knowledge and wisdom doesn’t work. The ones who have the venerable heads of white have gained wisdom through years of experience. For most of us the long, organic learning process will prove more fruitful in the end than the quick and easy shortcut method.
4.) Difficulties in our undertakings increase our appreciation on many levels.
The Game: The more challenging a puzzle has been for me to solve, the more I have learned from it. Getting stuck forced me to think outside the box — quite literally in this case. I learned lessons that I wouldn’t have if all had been easy. Furthermore, the perplexity I suffered over the logic rules I wasn’t seeing only served to increase my joy when I finally did solve a difficult puzzle.
Life: We can get very discouraged when life if hard. We find ourselves incapable of solving our problems and don’t even see a way of thinking outside of our box. And yet, there are many things that we learn only after we’ve struggled with perplexity. If it were up to us, we would not choose that pain, but God allows it for our greater good. He has so much to teach us through our pains that we cannot possibly appreciate until we come out on the other side. In our difficulties and troubles let us remind ourselves, “One day I will thank and bless God for allowing me to suffer this.”
5.) People think differently, and it is really important to let them.
The Game: When sharing this game with a friend, I was tempted to explain to her all of the logical connections which I had discovered in the puzzle. On second thought, I remembered how much I had enjoyed making these discoveries for myself. It would not have been so fun or stimulating if it had all been explained to me. It was really hard for me not to interfere as I watched her do things very differently from how I would do them. She was taking the longest possible course of gathering information. And yet, I stood my ground. We ought not rob people of the joy of discovery just because they need more time or take a completely different route from our own to reach the conclusion.
Life: I am reminded of the following annacdote: There was a student who could not see whatever the video or demonstration in the classroom was because he was in the back. The teacher seeing the difficulty, stopped herself from interfering and solving the child’s problem for him. Instead she just watched to see what he would do. She was delighted when the little one went and got himself a chair to stand on. He had solved his own problem in his own way.
Sometimes we attempt to help others by trying to get them to see things the way we see them. I am not speaking here of when we seek to show others objective truths which they do not understand, but rather when we take matters of opinion, preference, temperament, differences in approach to problem solving or thinking things through, and handle such matters as if our way was the only way or the right way. If I see myself as superior to those whose minds work differently, chances are people will not actually want the kind of “help” that I’m trying to give them. A good teacher wants his student to discover the joy of learning, and he accomplishes this by respecting and giving space to the radical uniqueness of each individual’s mind.
6.) Sometimes the problem is not that I am missing information, but rather that I can’t see what is right in front of me.
The Game: It is a humbling experience to have tried the same box umpteen times unsuccessfully, only to discover that the information I’ve been looking for has indeed been there the whole time. “I’ve been stuck on this puzzle for three days because of my own failure to see what was obvious?!” How perfectly vexing, and at the same time, revelatory!
Life: Some of us have a harder time than others admitting out loud, to others, that we could be wrong. Some of us struggle to realize that this is an actual possibility, even in privacy of our own thoughts. At what point does self assurance cross the line and become arrogance? Maybe when it fails to appreciate that men are inherently fallible.
7.) When we get stuck, sometimes it is better to stop pushing.
The Game: When I get stuck in a puzzle, my inclination is to keep with it. Never give up! Of course duties and the day’s schedule often necessitate leaving a puzzle in the midst of a jam. It has happened that I’ve had to leave a stuck spot and have been unable to return to it until a few days or weeks later. Often enough the forced break has helped, and upon returning to the puzzle, I’ve found that I could think about things with a fresh perspective and get passed the sticky spot.
Life: When we come to an impass in life, pushing harder is not always the solution. It isn’t quitting or giving up to take a break from the wrestling match. It may be that we are trying to overcome our bad habits or selfish tendencies. Yes! Good! Never give up! I think the relentless-pushing-approach may indeed work sometimes or for some people. However, I know I have seen it fail. God wants us to learn that our perfection is His business. Overcoming our miseries is a gift that He gives when He sees fit. I wonder if He lets our best efforts fall flat in order to teach us we cannot get out of ruts by sheer force of will.
8.) It is not enough to do good; we must also avoid evil.
The Game: This puzzle is all about using logic to find the correct number — this is the doing good part. Those who have tried realize that you have to draw your conclusions very carefully. Unfortunately, it is pretty easy to jump to an incorrect conclusion — the evil we must avoid. And all it takes is one false step to put you off track. From there you proceed to make more wrong conclusions which flow from the initial error, until finally you discover that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong. It all ends in tears and misery. Well, not exactly, but you may have to start over again from the beginning, which is pretty painful.
Life: Good and evil in the realm of being correspond to truth and error in the realm of ideas — one is the perfection that ought to be there, and the other is the lack of that perfection. It would seem to be enough to know and love what is true. We would automatically be excluding what is false. As correct as this is, I wonder if there is a certain subtlety of emphasis to consider. If a man is setting out on a journey, and is told that all he needs to do is to follow the road and he will reach his destination, he will not be thinking of avoiding the numerous pits along the road which are exceedingly dangerous due to their inconspicuousness. It is still true that all he needs to do is to stay on the road, but obviously his awareness of the pits will impact how he proceeds. All those too-easy-to-make false conclusions are harmless enough in a sudoku puzzle. However, in real life such mistakes can have serious and painful consequences.
The air we breath is so poisoned with erroneous ideas which are taken for granted that I’d say it has become imperative for us to be very deliberate in following truth. Knowing there is a battle raging, we will cling to truth, goodness, and beauty as our strongest defenses and weapons.
