26 miniature cubes and six sides — the Rubik’s Cube is one of the most puzzling challenges we face as a kid. As young as five years old, I became intrigued with this cube, twisting and turning to no end. Every time I completed one color, the other colors would mess up. Frustrated, I accepted defeat and placed the cube back into the bin. 

It wasn’t until middle school when I witnessed a few of my friends effortlessly solve the 3×3 cube that I decided I should try once more. This time, however, I had access to an entire database on how to solve it — the Internet. Despite that, I still had quite a lot of trouble memorizing several of the algorithms needed. It took 11-year-old me several days to get a hold of learning all the complex algorithms and, to be frank, there were a plethora of times when I wanted to give up when confronted by some of the longer algorithms. However, when I finally solved that Rubik’s Cube for the first time without looking at my cheat sheet, I remember thinking that all my effort was worth it and completely forgot about the immense adversity my memorization skills had faced for days on end.

Solving the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube was rough for 11-year-old me, but I’ve learned an important lesson that I still look back on to this day. As cliché as it may seem, the journey through life is comparable to solving a Rubik’s Cube. When solving a Rubik’s Cube, many may feel discouraged when the colors don’t match up to how they want them to. It can be extremely frustrating when our life doesn’t go exactly as we had planned it to. But, you can look at it this way: just as there are over 43 quintillion ways to solve a Rubik’s Cube, there are different paths through life. Each circumstance you face is comparable to a different twist and turn on the cube, and depending on which way you turn, your journey to the destination may be easier or harder, shorter or longer. But, no matter how disheartening solving the Rubik’s Cube may be, we should persevere through it because we know that somehow, someway, we will align those colors and solve the cube, albeit through an unexpected journey.