The Most Revealing Trait in Our Human Nature

Long walks, workouts, quizzes, scrabble, cocktails, film nights, wine tasting, cake baking, fancy dress, cooking, navel-gazing, falling out, making up, afternoon naps, clapping at six, long baths, murders and staring openmouthed at the news.

Of all the things we did during the lockdown, it was the humble jigsaw that revealed the most about our human nature.

The Jigsaw Paradox

I laid the pieces out on our dining-room table, searching for the straight edges to form the border. Thinking sensibly, like a true puzzler.

My kid saw me and, intrigued, he sat down at the table and helped. Soon, the other two kids joined in. We busied ourselves trying to piece the picture together.

It was fun. We passed a pleasant hour before Mum shouted us through for lunch. Afterwards, she joined in. We completed the border and separated pieces into their approximate colours to make it easier to find the bits we needed.

The next morning I sprang out of bed, made coffee and instead of sitting at my computer I sat at the dining-room table. By the time I’d drank my coffee, I’d slotted a dozen more pieces into place.

After dinner, we sat around the jigsaw and spent an engaging hour piecing the picture together. We chatted and laughed. Got frustrated when we couldn’t find a piece, then a boost when we discovered it right under our nose or on the floor or stuck to the dog.

We were an ordinary family doing an ordinary thing, and it felt extraordinarily good.

Our biological software is compatible with foraging, hunting and gathering. And we did that in groups, for safety. We are social animals, predisposed to the sounds, smells and touches of others.

Being part of a project is more rewarding than singular achievements. There was a buzz in the room. Anticipation. Excitement. Hope.

It was only a jigsaw, but when that last piece slotted into place, we stood and cheered.

High-fives all round. Cuddles. Coffee and cake.

A shared success.

There is a point to this story

There is something illogical about doing a jigsaw —

You don’t get paid for doing it. You put a lot of time and effort into something that, after a suitable 24-hour period, gets broken up and put back in its box.

You don’t hang the finished jigsaw on your wall — unless you are my dad (lol dad).

And all that is fine — but imagine if I paid you to do the jigsaw. How would you feel afterward? This is the jigsaw paradox.

Internal motivation is better than external motivation.

The more people focus on a reward, the less they focus on satisfying their intellectual curiosity — the fun part.

I didn’t think of what I would earn when I wrote my funny police memoirs because I would have written them for free. I wanted to remember all those crazy characters and their absurd antics. They were a challenge to write, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle in some ways, but I found it absorbing and often broke down in tears, mostly of laughter.

Fortunately, people liked them, and having someone call you or stop you in the street, send you a message, or write a review on Amazon telling you how much they enjoyed them is a shared joy.

Where satisfaction comes from

“It’s so satisfying when the last piece clicks into place and everything makes sense. It’s probably the best feeling you can have in the world with your clothes on.”

— Said my stupid friend.

I can see why he’d think that, but I’ve always found the opposite is true. I spent years writing my books, recalling events, shaping stories, changing words, reading them aloud, and editing; it was a labour of love, the sort where I formed a relationship with the endeavour.

I used words to create sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. All the while polishing, tweaking, and testing. Finishing with enough stories to call it a book. I had a cover designed, completed the formatting and uploaded it to Amazon.

Time to celebrate, you might think.

All the hours, days, weeks and months. All the thinking, remembering, searching and effort produced something worth sharing. But this was my baby. And as soon as it was out of my hands, it left a hole. A gnaw. A feeling that something was missing.

I noticed it with the jigsaw. Once the cheerleading settled down, we looked at each other, not sure what to do. Uncomfortably, we went our separate ways — Playstation, television, newspapers. Boredom.

When teams complete a task, before they get their teeth into another, they get out of balance, become impatient and get a little snappy. They are lost and they are low. Sadness that can last several days.

For us, the reward wasn’t completing the jigsaw. The reward was the time spent with family working together for a common cause. Hunting, gathering, creating and bonding.

We didn’t earn money. We got paid in ways more valuable ways, we just didn’t realise it. We cooperated. We achieved a goal. And in doing so, we expressed our love for each other. Family moments like these are gold.

The jigsaw paradox is a metaphor for life.

The motivation is in the doing. We humans need to keep on keeping on. Whether it be working on a solitary task or the joy of a shared venture. Once we are done, it is we who are packed up into a box and forgotten.

Malky McEwan