Number 24 - A Rubik's Cube, a little metaphor for life?

In the spring of 1974, Erno Rubik, the 29 year old Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture invented the puzzle that was to become the aggravation of one eighth of the worlds population. 

Since it's release in 1980 it has become the worlds best selling toy (over 350 million) earning a place in New York's Museum of Modern Art, a spot in the Oxford Dictionary and a fairly impressive list of film credits.

As a true child of the 80s, it has been a minor but niggling addition to my list but I soon realised that this little niggle would give way to full blown obsession once I seriously began trying to solve it.


Sitting on my bedside table, it became a night-time frustration to at least get one more block to line up (without messing up everything I had already done!)

Many have offered their advice ("Just take the stickers off!"), and I've had more than one "It's easy" but I was determined to solve it without the use of YouTube or WikiHow.

So began six months of ups and downs, backwards and forwards, two steps forward and ten steps back. Yes, the cube. Often tempted to quit and regularly having to start from scratch, I wondered if I was supposed to learn more from this than how to get all of the green on one side. 

Perhaps this multi-coloured pain in my ass was a crazy little metaphor. "Repeat the same thing often enough and it will return to its original state, a mess?" "Enough ups and downs and you'll make it in the end?" Perhaps it's as simple as just teaching me a little patience.

So six months after stealing a Bank of America Rubik's Cube off my Mum's desk, I finally cracked it. That last little blue piece found its way home and the child in me can feel just a little satisfied.