Tuesday, July 4, 2017

The Missing Piece

Sometimes missing pieces do more than just complete the puzzle...
They would do more than just filling an empty space...
They may teach you one of the most valuable lessons in your life...

I'm gonna tell you about an interesting activity we did today at the PPD lecture. It's called "Barter Puzzle".
We were grouped into four teams and given a picture, which we were asked to cut into 76 small pieces!
Then each group was given a bag filled with 76 pieces of a different picture from another group, and asked to complete the puzzle.

But there was a catch! We didn't have all the pieces of our picture with us. Few pieces were there with other groups and we had few pieces of them.

Anyways, so we started to complete the jigsaw puzzle. At the beginning it was totally a mess!
Then one by one we started to figure out the pieces. First it was a watermelon, then came a pineapple, and oh! there were some papayas too πŸ˜‰

But let me tell you, it wasn't as easy as it sounds. At the beginning they were just meaningless pieces with some weird shapes...
But then one set of team members figured out there's a watermelon and started working on that. Then another set of people started working on pineapples.
Little by little we started to add a meaning to those once a meaningless set of pieces.

But there were missing parts that we had to get from other groups. That was the real challenge!
It didn't take much time for me to realize that bargaining with people is harder than I have initially imagined.
Some people were really fair. They agreed to give one piece of our puzzle in exchange to one piece of theirs.
But not everyone was fair. Some wanted us to give two pieces in exchange of just one! Some were asking us to get their pieces from some other groups, and then only they would give us our piece.

Anyways, with lots of bargaining we managed to get some of our pieces back, and we also managed to get few more pieces that belonged to other teams as well.

It happened like this...
In one of the teams, they had two pieces of ours but I had only one piece of them. I knew they would never give me those two pieces in exchange to one of theirs, no matter how nicely I ask.
So I torn the piece I had with myself into two and then at first I gave them just one piece and got one of ours in return. If I gave them two pieces at the same time, I was afraid they would find out that I have torn one piece into two. After some time, I went to them for the second time and produced the other piece and got one more piece of ours.

So, would you call me a Cheater?

Well, I'm not gonna justify my actions. But dear reader, in this world, not everything is roses and sunshine. People wouldn't always play fairly and nor would they let you take one step ahead of them. It's a competitive and quite a selfish world. So there may come situations where you have to use your brains and be tactful.

Let me quote you a line from the movie Suicide Squad.

"Their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble.
They are only as good as the world allows them to be.
When the chips are down, these civilized people, they'll eat each other"
                                                                     ~ Joker


             














There was another such incident. This also happened when I went to bargain with another group. They had three pieces of us and I had three of them. When I asked for our pieces they just pointed out the pieces and asked to take them. They were so focused in making their own puzzle and no one paid any attention to me. So I took the three pieces and left only one of their piece keeping the rest of the two with myself.

So, would you call me a Cheater again?

Dear reader, when you get an opportunity thrown at yourself, get the maximum use of it, because such opportunities are rare and you won't get them everyday. And know this well, that you are not responsible for the carelessness of other people. So don't feel bad about yourself if you ever took advantage of their carelessness.
So play your cards right.

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing  a poor hand well"                       
                                                          ~ Jack London


At the end of the day, we managed to almost complete our puzzle, but there was just ONE piece missing! Anyways, we became the winning team at the end of the game, and all my team members were happy 😊



In my journey of finding the missing pieces, I learnt a lot. But with all these lessons, the last missing piece was in my mind quite a lot even when the lecture was over. I had two pieces of the team that had our last missing piece. I was ready to hand them over the two pieces in exchange of our last piece, but they refused.

Maybe I could have tried a bit harder,
maybe I could have used a different strategy,
maybe I could have helped them to find all their missing pieces and to complete their puzzle.
But would that have been enough for them?
Would I have got my last missing piece back then?








27 comments:

  1. you mentioned some were not fair exchanged only one while they hold other two still they didn't cheat.it won't come under stealing. noteam except yours tore those pieces or stole. we can put quotes to make reader to feel what i did was correct.If cheating allowed in games then why have rules and referees.Even we can argue and say a murderer killed someone is right.still it's a crime.when we have trust in someone we won't expect that they ll cheat just for 5 mins happiness. winning in something is seems drug.people ready to whatever to win but mostly not in right way. have more to say ll write in ma blog .

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    1. I would not say it's cheating.. and I'm not only talking about the game we did in the class. I'm talking about in general. No murder happened. No one get killed, so chill
      Yes, there are rules.. would those rules still there when things start to go bad for the rule makers? I'm trying to tell here that life isn't fair.
      Yes we maybe good in our heart. Play fairly and treat everyone better, but just because u treat nicely doesn't mean they would do the same to you in return. That's how the world is. but we never want to look at it as it is, because truth to be told it's ugly. So we make our own bubble and live inside it. But once u step into the society, it wouldn't even take a millisecond to get ur bubble burst out...

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    2. simplest thing u encouraged people to cheat to get benefits or win.corruptions start from every single person in this mindset. that's how our country is still developing country.nobody ready to change them selves neh.

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    3. btw muder happened. you guys murdered the trust

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    4. Are you saying that that one peice we get from you is the reason for your defeatπŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚???? I gave it back btw if you can remember


      Grow up dude😘

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  2. Wow you getting better ✌keep writing

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  3. Nice as always 🌼🌼🌼

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  4. First time I read like this...weired.I like this post..great work..����

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  5. Good article Varuni. It's very interesting!

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  6. Woooow.. it is really interesting from the very beginning to read. We can read the whole article without getting bored. Quality writing nangi. You should write more. Good luck!!!

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  7. Nice one Varu.. keep it up ❤

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  8. Well written πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

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  9. This feels interesting! nice one!

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