We had just finished dinner and my son was solving his Rubik’s Cube when all of a sudden we heard plastic hit the table and looked over to see that his cube had just exploded into pieces! As I’d collected the pieces into a bag, I wondered if I’d be able to successfully reassemble it.

Have you ever tried to solve a Rubik’s Cube? I have, and I solved it once, when I was very young. My dad had a classic Rubik’s Cube which intrigued me. I’d also discovered that he had a book which held all of the secrets on how to solve it. After reading through the various sequences of twists, turns and rotations I’d eventually solved it. It took some work, but I’d done it! Then, not wanting to memorize all those sequences of moves, I put down the cube and lost interest in it.

Roughly 30 years later, my son picked it up around the same time I did in life, seemingly following in my footsteps. Using a similar guide, he’d also solved the cube but took it a step further and memorized all those moves and sequences and can now consistently solve it in around 90 seconds! His current record is just under a minute. Certainly he’s going for speed now.

During his speed runs on the cube there had been a couple times where a piece had popped out and I had to pop it back in. We quickly discovered that you can’t just do that though. Did you know that it needs to be replaced in the correct position or else the cube will be unsolvable? Yup, I’ve had to pop that piece out again, rotate it and pop it back in to fix it.

This brings us back to the dinner table with my son’s broken Rubik’s cube. When it broke, the top slice and part of the middle slice had sprung apart, which meant that about half of the cube was separated from its core. Remember how I mentioned that it matters how the pieces are placed? That meant I couldn’t just pop them back in hoping for the best. In order to make sure it was solvable, I would have to take apart the rest of the cube, and rebuild it in the solved state with all the colors in place.

As I rebuilt it, I wondered if there might be some life lessons here. Really, how could there not be?