the puzzle without a name
the puzzle that can be named is not the true puzzle. but there is a puzzle. there’s something you haven’t understood. there’s pieces you’re missing and you can’t see the whole picture. there’s something you need to slide into the right configuration that isn’t there yet. there’s something that isn’t quite right, that doesn’t quite fit. there is a puzzle without a name.
at some point, somewhere, something went wrong. when it was your turn to be churned out of the person factory maybe there were parts missing or maybe you landed on the conveyor belt at a funny angle and something got screwed on where it shouldn’t be. someone fucked up and now you’re fucked up. someone oughta be fired for this but you’re damned if you can figure out who (or maybe you know exactly who). the factory-standard persons get up and dust themselves off and go do whatever it is persons are supposed to do with smiles on their faces, but you went off in the wrong direction, you can’t quite figure out how the controls are supposed to work, you’re like that penguin in happy feet where he simply cannot resist doing a different thing from everyone else, where is the goddamn instruction manual for this thing anyway?
maybe it’s like there are two puzzles, the jigsaw puzzle and the rubik’s cube. the jigsaw puzzle is a map of the rubik’s cube. it would be hard enough to figure out how to solve the rubik’s cube, which is fantastically multidimensional and fractally complicated, but the society that was supposed to show you the jigsaw puzzle is not only actively hiding pieces from you but actively lying to you about what the pieces are supposed to look like. how are you supposed to get any work done under these conditions? it’s like a video game they would use to torture nerds in hell.
the point at which you go past the veil of maya and can never look back is the first time you find a puzzle piece you didn’t know was there, the first time you see a part of the jigsaw you didn’t know existed, the first time you move the rubik’s cube in a way you didn’t know was possible and suddenly everything is different, suddenly everything is deeper and richer and freer than you could have guessed. that’s how you know there is a puzzle. once begun, better to finish.
there are countless ways to get stuck on the puzzle. it’s unbelievably tempting to believe that once you’ve made real progress and seen the light and nothing will ever be the same again that you are done. but as our ancestors said, a hypothesis affords testing. you slam yourself into the world and there is still friction, there is still shear, you still manage to completely beef it, and it’s because you’re nowhere close to done, what you thought was the peak of the mountain was only the foothills and the mountains themselves recede vastly into unimaginable distances, you thought you beat the game but it turns out that was disc 1 of N.
some people will try to convince you there’s nowhere to be, nothing to solve. this is itself part of the puzzle. it’s a riddle, it’s a koan. it’s important but you don’t need to get stuck here, you can listen to the part of yourself that insists that that can’t possibly be it, that there has to be something more.
it’s dangerous to go alone! take this:
"there’s always a valid sense in which, if it feels wrong it is wrong"
"in any moment you are the final arbiter of what's true and good"
"there will be thousands of things that are hard to look at"
good luck. don’t forget to drink some water. maybe add electrolytes.
this is one of those posts that only makes sense at 2 AM when you're alone and can't sleep.
i realize that as i type that, it sounds somewhat more like an insult than a compliment, but i only say that because i've been there myself, at 2 am, wondering about the puzzle without a name, because you really only become aware of the existence of the puzzle and that something, somewhere went wrong, when your life is the life of a person that can't sleep through no fault of their own. exercise gives you endorphins, endorphins make people happy, and well i suppose endorphins also make it harder to sleep as well, but then again, happy people don't receive tough questions from god in the middle of the night.
it's certainly possible to be aware of your flaws and your misperceptions when you're awake and sober, but something about realizing you're out of place, something about becoming aware of this inherently self-recursive, quicksand-like state of "something went wrong somewhere and i don't know what", just hits that much harder when it's dark outside and your body's adenosine receptors are receptoring something other than adenosine. it's probably the first time you've ever had to confront truths that have been unconfronted for a long time. insomnia impairs the body in a lot of ways, and in such a state, the power running through the defense mechanisms you built around your fears, insecurities, and self-serving lies goes on the fritz.
of course it hurts, and of course the questions don't go away the next morning. and of course simply being aware of problems doesn't suddenly make you an expert at solving them. and of course simply having a new perspective on yourself, of gaining new information about yourself you weren't aware of but everyone else sort of knew the whole time, isn't always a good thing either. and maybe you have to go through a lot of shit before you find the answer. and maybe you still haven't found the answer.
but maybe it's a first step.
(and for the record, i also realize after typing this that intentionally using your writing style for this comment could be seen as mocking or insulting, so let me say that wasn't my intent. i do concede that other people might consider this kind of no-caps stream of consciousness stuff embarrassing and weird, in which case, i guess we can be embarrassing and weird on the internet together. one could certainly do worse.)