My son was born in the wrong century. He is an old soul through and through.

This weekend while cleaning out his room we came upon his Rubik’s Cube. I honestly can’t remember when he got it. I don’t think it’s been used in over a year. He told me he wanted to take it to school because “they were a thing.”

As he started playing with it, twisting it and pondering each move, I saw the wheels in his head turning. He explained his strategy to me. Then he rushed over to my computer to look something up. He  had remembered hearing about You Can Do the Cube on CNN’s “The Eighties” and wanted to look it up.

I asked him why he didn’t just find a video to explain how to solve it. No. He wanted a book. This particular book.  He wouldn’t even let me Google a solution to the cube so intent he was on reading to discover how to solve it. Granted, he is a book worm.

But, why not take the quick and easy way out? Find a video immediately, practice and solve?

Now we are waiting for the book and in the meantime he will twist and twist the Rubik’s Cube, most likely never solving it. But, in the span of time between ordering the book and waiting for it to arrive he will have learned lessons about persevering and used problem solving skills. Most importantly, he will hopefully just have fun playing with it.

My child is way smarter than me and this is a perfect example of that. Sometimes we don’t need to take the quick and easy way to find an answer. Sometimes the journey is way more valuable. Sometimes, even though the answers are at our fingertips we don’t have to rush to find them.