The Rubik's Cube and the People Who Teach Us

Last year, over Thanksgiving, I visited my family in the United States. I spent most of my time in Spokane Valley, a beautiful city on the eastern side of Washington State. It was late autumn. The trees had already turned brilliant shades of gold and crimson, the mornings were crisp, and the evenings invited people indoors to the warmth of family.

I stayed with my sister and her family, and it became one of the most memorable parts of my trip.

My nephew, Ivo, was only eight months old. At that age, every day is an adventure. He had just begun discovering the world around him, and his curiosity seemed endless. One moment he was smiling, the next he was crawling towards something that had suddenly captured his attention. Keeping up with him was both exhausting and delightful. He had a way of reminding everyone around him that joy is often found in the smallest moments.

Thanksgiving was everything I expected and more. Family gathered around the table, friends dropped in throughout the day, stories were exchanged, laughter filled the house, and the traditional turkey occupied the centre of the dining table. It struck me that no matter where we come from, families everywhere share the same desire to belong, to reconnect, and to create memories together.

After the celebrations, most of the visitors left. I stayed behind for a few more weeks, enjoying the slower pace of everyday family life.

That is when my brother-in-law, Aaron, introduced me to something I had always admired from a distance but had never seriously attempted.

The Rubik's Cube.

Like many people, I thought it was simply a matter of matching colours. How difficult could it be?

It didn't take long to discover how wrong I was.

Every time I managed to fix one side, another side fell apart. The harder I tried to force a solution, the more complicated the puzzle became. Some evenings I stayed up much later than I should have, convinced I was only a few moves away from solving it. Instead, I often ended up with an even bigger mess than when I had started.

Aaron never seemed bothered.

He patiently explained the same sequence over and over again. When I got lost, he didn't grab the cube from my hands to show me how clever he was. He simply walked me through it one more time. Eventually, after enough repetition, I managed to solve it once or twice.

I still cannot solve it consistently. If you handed me one today, I would probably need YouTube to refresh my memory.

But somewhere between those coloured squares and countless failed attempts, I realised the Rubik's Cube was teaching me something far more important than how to solve a puzzle.

It was teaching me how progress really works.

In construction, we often face projects that seem impossible at first. A bridge begins as an empty river crossing. A market starts as bare ground. Looking at the finished structure, people see concrete, steel and paint. They rarely see the thousands of decisions, corrections and small victories that made it possible.

Business is no different.

Many people admire successful companies without seeing the countless mistakes, revisions and difficult conversations that happened before success arrived. Every thriving enterprise is really a collection of problems that were solved one at a time.

Leadership follows the same pattern.

The best leaders are rarely the loudest or the smartest people in the room. More often, they are the ones with enough patience to teach, enough humility to listen, and enough confidence to allow others to struggle without taking over. They understand that people do not grow because someone solved every problem for them. They grow because someone stayed beside them while they learned to solve those problems themselves.

The Rubik's Cube also reminded me of something else.

Not every problem can be solved by working harder. Some require a different sequence. Others require us to undo several moves before we can move forward again. That can feel frustrating, especially for those of us who like quick results. Yet life has a way of rewarding patience more than speed.

Looking back, I have forgotten most of the algorithms Aaron taught me.

What I have never forgotten is his patience.

Years from now, I doubt anyone will remember whether I ever mastered the Rubik's Cube. But I will always remember the person who was willing to sit beside me, encourage me, and let me learn at my own pace.

As I have grown older, I have come to believe that this is how lives are shaped. We all meet people who hand us a complicated puzzle. Some solve it for us and move on. A few rare people teach us how to solve it ourselves.

Those are the people who leave a lasting mark.

And perhaps that is the greatest lesson of all. Success is not measured by how many puzzles we can solve. It is measured by how many people we patiently help solve theirs.