The Labyrinth

Jorge had been working on a story, and I asked to hear it, but it seemed he wanted to tell it, and so he did.

Joroska had always enjoyed enigmas.  Even as a young boy, he did every crossword puzzle, riddle or maze he could get his hands on.

He became truly dedicated to solving problems.  But some were still too difficult for him and escaped his grasp.

When confronted with such a problem, he always followed the same ritual.  He would look at it for a long time, and then suddenly, calling on all his previous experience, he would decide if it was unsolvable.

If it was, he would exhale deeply, and commit to solving it anyways.  In the beginning these problems would frustrate him, but eventually this ritual of analyzing problems became an obsession.

Over the years, many problems fell into this category: unanswerable questions, dead-ended mazes, indecipherable symbols, unknown words, and impossible illusions.

Around that time, Joroska began realizing that a person needed to be successful in life.  Perhaps that's why he started losing interest in problems he considered unsolvable.

Not long after he started one, he would become ridiculously bored and give up.  In the back of his mind, he would criticize the authors of these absurd problems.

He was just as irritated by easy problems, and he eventually realized that there could be a perfect problem. One made to the measure of a given individual.. but only the person themselves could know that measure.

It would be ideal if a person could make riddles for themselves, he said to himself.  But he realized that someone would immediately lose interest in their own problems, since the creator of a problem would know its solution.

But he was excited about the idea of others like him, who wanted to solve such problems, so he started making them:  word puzzles, number puzzles, logical enigmas, and abstract games... but his masterpiece was a labyrinth.

One calm and quiet afternoon, he started building a wall, brick by brick, inside a room in his house, in order to create a full size labyrinth.

As the years went by, he shared his riddles with friends and was even published in magazines and newspapers, but the labyrinth remained a secret.  And it grew ever larger inside of his house.

With each passing day it became more complicated, more intricate, and although he never intended it, he ended up adding more and more dead ends.

This project became a part of his daily routine and not a day went by that he didn't add to it.  At the very least adding a few bricks, but more often sealing off an exit, or extending a path to make things more difficult.

Twenty years later, there was no space left in the original room, and the labyrinth began creeping out into the rest of the house.

To get from the bedroom to the bathroom he would go eight steps forward, turn left, go six steps further, turn right, go down a flight of stairs, five more steps forward, make another right, and then leap over an obstacle to arrive at the bathroom door.

To get to the terrace, he would lean forward on his left foot, tuck and roll a few meters to get to a rope ladder, and climb to the next floor where the terrace was.

His house was eventually completely transformed.

At first, he found it extremely satisfying.  It was fun and sometimes passageways would lead him nowhere, even though he was the one who created them, because there were too many to remember.

The labyrinth was perfectly matched to his abilities, perfectly matched.

So he starting inviting people over to his house... labyrinth.  But just like when he used to solve other people's puzzles, even the most interested visitors would eventually grow bored.
He offered to guide them, but before long they would ask to leave.  And they all made the same comment.. 'You can't possibly go on living this way!'

He began to feel more and more isolated, so he moved into a new house, one without a labyrinth, one where he could entertain guests.

But whenever he met someone particularly smart, he would bring them to his true home.

Just like the pilot from The Little Prince, and his special drawing, Joroska would only open the doors to his labyrinth for those he deemed worthy of the << distinction>>... but he never found anyone who would wanted to live there with him.