People Are Puzzles
“People are riddles. They want someone else to solve their riddle. They live life wanting someone to solve the riddle that they are, the most difficult riddle in the world.”
People are riddles. People are puzzles. I wonder where my puzzle pieces are. I picture someone burying a pocketknife in my stomach and I bleed them out. The bloody puzzle pieces fall, all visible and for the taking. My stabber ignores my dying carcass and puts the pieces together. I die happily as I am solved. What would it feel like to bleed out the most precious parts of yourself? People yearn for this feeling. They crave it. They expect it.
What are these puzzle pieces? Why don’t I solve my puzzle on my own and be over with it? But a part of me doesn’t want my puzzle to be solved. A part of the puzzle eludes its solution. If I were solved, no one else would play with me. No one would ever need to approach me. You show a solved puzzle like you parade a corpse. “Look at this thing. It was hard to get, but damn, I finally got it. Now there is no need to interact with it ever again. It is inert and boring.” What is a riddle if no one tries to solve it? Nothing. A waste.
You get why I can’t solve my own puzzle, don’t you? You also get why I can’t tell anyone the solution, right? It’d be like spoiling the entirety of a movie you have never even heard about. No, that’s not quite it… It would be like giving a final explanation of everything that happens in a movie you are acquainted with. People loathe when even the author stands up from their authorial chair and gives an “official” explanation! And people hate the fans who just eat it up and use it as a shield, as an excuse! People want to be free to interpret what they saw, solve things their way, and keep at it to their heart’s content, no matter what the creator of the puzzle says.
I also don’t want my puzzle solved just yet, not so easily, not by my hand, because I want to keep annoying people. That’s part of the fun of our puzzle-solving existence. I revel in inability to put my pieces together. I revel in making them scratch their heads, grumble, frown, and give up, calling bullshit on me and walking away. Good riddance! You couldn’t solve me; you didn’t even start making connections between the pieces; you refused to see how my parts fit; you stopped thinking. You are looking for an easier puzzle. Go parade someone else’s corpse, then. Asshole. I’ll still be alive, and I’ll sting your puzzle-solver’s pride. You go for easy prey; you don’t deserve to kill me. Only one as stubborn as me will ever solve me.
Get Nicolas Arkilo’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But some puzzles are so difficult that no one dares to approach them anymore. They go unsolved, unnoticed, unfulfilled. They will live in spite: no one is coming for them, no one is daring enough, no one is willing to invest time and effort, no one sees the connections, no one sees the coherent picture beneath the incoherent appearances. There are no detectives, no heroes, no redeemers, no solvers. “Who am I waiting for? No one. No one is coming and no one is here. No one will ever see me, expose me, finish me.”
We must regulate the difficulty of our puzzle. If it’s too easy, we will die easily, and no one will have fun. If it’s too hard, no one will kill us, and no one will have fun. A fun puzzle is solvable but elusive, harsh but permissive.
Someone will put me back together? back together? Was I ever put together in the first place? This scattered existence. Was I born scattered? You talk about the puzzle that I am as if it is only one puzzle, frozen in time and waiting to return to its original form. Were you to look at the once-unbroken picture of me and recreate it, would that be a satisfying solution? Or, if there never was an unbroken picture, were you to put together the pieces of one of my past selves, would that be a satisfying solution?
No, the puzzle is ever-changing. Some pieces are removed, others are added. Some pieces change their shape, others never change. Some pieces stop fitting with some, others start fitting with others. Some pieces are forgotten, others are too big to ignore. Some pieces are colored, others are colorless. Some pieces are unique, others appear in someone else’s puzzle. Yes, a satisfying solution to a puzzle will account for the totality of a person’s experiences. Kill the person as it is now. Kill all that they have become up until now. And now you are part of the puzzle.
I shudder to think of a world without puzzles, where everyone truly knows everyone, our pieces exposed. Nothing to do, nothing to feel, nothing to annoy, nothing to dare, nothing to struggle for. No one would want to interact with anyone, and we would all burn out alone and miserable.
Mysteries prevent humanity’s extinction.
But such a world is possible. A world where everyone will lose interest in everyone else. A world of abandonment. A world of bitterness. A world of disappointment. A world of certainty. A world of answers.
Our struggles to understand each other bring us together.
