I kept seeing her do it, and I kept wondering why she was trying.
Every morning and night at meals and in our spare time for a week, my friend Mary would sit at a table in a corner, eyebrows furrowed and occasionally wiping the concentration-sweat from her brow, trying to solve the Rubik's Cube. I'd hear her make comments to Joshua, her teacher, the only time she'd tear her eyes from the enigmatic block of colors, and watch in amusement as she'd wait for his answer and return immediately to her solitary world – vexed, perplexed and silenced by the twists and turns of a cube that seemed to entrance her more quickly than a cotton candy stand captivates a six-year-old.
But finally, after about a week, I heard it.
I heard her shout of glee when she had solved it at last, and honestly, I rejoiced with her. I felt somewhat hypnotized by her hypnotization, laughing every time I walked in our common room and saw her hiding in the corner trying to figure it out, yet unable to stop noticing how dedicated she was to success. I was genuinely happy she'd been triumphant.
I didn't think about it for a couple of days, but then I couldn't seem to take my eyes off the stupid Rubik's Cube that sat untouched in the common room. You must know that I have never had even a moment's desire to learn to solve one. I'm a liberal arts major; anything to do with logic and reasoning that could be a distant relative of mathematics makes me head the opposite direction faster than you can say hypotenuse.
But for whatever reason – I'll call it God – the cube won our staring contest and I scooped it up, asking Mary what the first step was.
When I made the first turn, I’m pretty sure something happened in the spiritual realm. I was hooked. I had to figure it out. I began taking it with me to Phumlani and worked on it for a couple of days during lunch breaks and every single morning and night, and now I can proudly say that I can solve a Rubik’s Cube in three minutes. (That's embarrassingly slow for all you experts out there, but the fact that I can do it is just mind-boggling to me, so I'm proud nonetheless.)
Why do I tell this story, you ask?
Because the Rubik's Cube became so much more than an exercise in logic.
As I spent the three or four days learning the right moves, messing up, starting over and struggling to remember patterns, I found it increasingly frustrating and somewhat humiliating to continue but impossible to stop. Repeatedly I had to go to Joshua and Mary and ask for help, and sometimes they would mess the cube up just to make me do it again and get better before I moved onto the next step.
In my frustration I realized that it’d been years since I had done anything that challenged or pushed me.
It was the first thing I've done in a very long time that didn’t come naturally to me – not because I'm good at everything, but because I've been afraid to fail at anything. Apparently sometime in my life I became too proud to try anything new and have been living limited by my own unwillingness to make mistakes.
It opened my eyes in a simple way to the lessons that doing hard things is worth it, and trying new things can surprise you. I can't describe the sense of reward I now feel for sticking with it and pushing myself to finish – all over a silly cube that became a palm-sized indicator of life-sized realities.
bow-legged betty, a child with some of the finest dance moves this side of joburg
Maybe it's more rewarding because I’m discovering a world of things I'd stopped considering just because I was too afraid to try them. Because of my few days spinning a block of colors, I'm now doing all sorts of things that I've never done before, things I actually really enjoy doing just for the sake of doing them and never tried, fearing I might not be good at them.
In a way, the Rubik's Cube allowed me to rediscover parts of me that I stuffed away a long time ago.
And it is just wildly fun.
I'm writing songs again.
I'm practicing guitar scales.
I'm trying to learn basic soccer skills.
I'm fairly bad at all of those things naturally, but because of God's grace packed into that Rubik's Cube, that's just not important anymore.
It's not important because of moments like the one where I laughed until I nearly passed out simply chasing a soccer ball around a field trying to keep up with it, gleefully marveling at the fact that every time I tried to nudge it with my toe, it launched off my shoe like a rocket-ship and forced me to run harder, subsequently kicking it even farther away. I felt like such a moron, yet I was a kind of childlike hysterical that made my cheeks hurt from smiling.
Still and finally, perhaps it’s most rewarding because my Rubik's Cube experience gave me the ability to see working with kids through new eyes, since I've always hated that, too. Somewhere between the blues and reds I decided that maybe if I gave Phumlani everything I had every day whether I felt like it or not, there could be something to glean from it in a similar way.
Go figure.
taryn, me, electra and a girl i call katie
I love those little kids more than I've ever loved any other tiny, smelly munchkins – and they’re probably the snottiest ones I’ve encountered. It's not my love, either; it's this supernatural love that flows from some peaceful place within me that I've never known before. It surprises me more than the children. I have this weird patience when they kick my shins and maul me from behind and when there are at least twelve hands in my hair braiding it from every side. Yesterday Electra looked right at me, smiled, and spit in my face – and I just looked at her, wiped my face and laughed, making sure to tell her that we don't do that kind of thing but really not caring much at all. I couldn’t help but notice the smile that had found its way onto my lips as I lifted her into my arms shortly thereafter and thought – why in the world am I smiling right now?
lucian, taryn and katie
God is just changing my life – he’s changing me – through these kids, one day, one temper tantrum, one misbehavior, one tearful outburst, one separated fight, one run-and-jump-in-my-arms and one spitball-in-my-face at a time. And if it weren’t for the lesson I learned through the Rubik’s Cube, I might be so concerned with my disdain for children’s ministry that I would be missing it all.
schnookums at the top, api on the right and the boy with braids on the left
Granted, it's still not easy. Every morning I have to psyche myself up for ministry, to prepare myself for our 9:30-6:00 days at the community center, but I think that’s kind of my point here – that doing hard things is worth it, and trying new things may surprise you.
Surprise me it has.
In such a good way.
m
