Patience

The past few days I've lying low, trying to get rid of an upper respiratory infection that took me by surprise last weekend. (I feel much better now!) But while I was too sick to do much of anything else I passed the time with a lot of computer games.

I'm sort of the odd duck in my family when it comes to games. My grandson likes strategy games like Virtual Villagers, or combat games like Capoeira Fighter. My husband likes Mahjjong and solitaire. My daughters like a variety of games that I can't even keep track of. But my taste runs to puzzles, of which the most recent is Jewel Quest III.

In case you haven't played this, it's a fairly standard matching game where pieces drop from above as you make combinations. Moving pieces sideways is almost impossible, but you have to do it in order to get the corner pieces turned to gold, or freed from the ice, or whatever. One of the levels proved more challenging than most, and I spent literally weeks trying the same board over and over without completing it. As I repeated the level, I gradually learned what I would have to do to get the pieces where they needed to be, but I never managed to accomplish the required action. Making a combination in a specific location on the right side of the board would unexpectedly trigger a cascade elsewhere that would end up destroying the setup I might have spent ten moves preparing. Frustrating, especially when time runs out just when you think you've finally got it.

I see a parallel between the way I play the game and the way I learn karate techniques. Just as it's hard to see how to get a game piece from point A to point B, sometimes it's hard to see how to get my body from technique A to technique B. Then again, sometimes when I'm concentrating on what my right hand is doing, I forget what my left hand is doing, which can lead to a brain freeze a few moves down the line. But I'm very patient, and I don't mind repeating things over and over.

So now that I have waxed philosophical for a while, I think I will go play a game.