I love building LEGO.

Sometimes when my mind is restless when I can’t settle down and my thoughts feel tangled I don’t try to convince myself to calm down. I simply sit down and start building. The process itself becomes a kind of meditation.

You begin with nothing. Piece by piece, a shape emerges. In a relatively short, contained “game,” something complete appears. That quick sense of visible progress brings reassurance. It restores certainty.

After building for a while, I began to notice something slightly unreasonable about LEGO. Often, a single large piece could solve the problem. Yet the design insists on breaking it into many smaller pieces different shapes, different colors, different angles. In the end, the result looks almost identical to what one large piece could have done.

And then it gets sealed.

All that internal complexity is covered by a smooth outer plate. From the outside, nothing seems complicated. But inside, every tiny piece is holding the structure together.

In the beginning, I used to place one “insignificant” piece incorrectly, and the entire section would misalign. I’d have to dismantle everything and start over. The frustration felt very similar to life those moments when you try your best, yet nothing aligns.

Over time, something shifted. I could spot errors in the instruction manual at a glance. If a piece was missing, I didn’t panic. If the structure felt weak, I reinforced it myself. Not because I became more skilled but because I understood where precision mattered and where flexibility was possible.

What LEGO ultimately taught me wasn’t how to build faster, bigger, or more perfectly. It taught me how to stay steady inside complexity. How to notice mistakes without collapsing. How to rebuild with patience.

It is a surprisingly effective emotional regulator.

When I can sit among a pile of scattered pieces without rushing, without spiraling, without breaking down, I know that something inside me has truly learned to stay.



—— XC Scribbles · 壹佰壹拾 CX 🧱