Building a Hobby, Brick by Brick
I have learned patience, focus and teamwork with LEGO sets
Throughout my life, I've read quite a lot about the importance of having patience. Unfortunately, for me, not much of it has stuck.
If you talk to my husband, he would say that he can't ever imagine me having been patient for anything.
All that changed, however, during the pandemic when we began watching the reality TV series "LEGO Masters."
Each week, we'd tune it to see adult contestants face challenges and design and then construct these amazing, magnificent and colorful LEGO creations. And when a team needed to get voted off — wait for it — the other teams were kind to them. In the later episodes in each season, folks actually cry when others have to leave.
We became inspired by these gorgeous builds to try LEGO ourselves.
Box of Bricks
As children, we had both built with LEGO bricks. But back then — for the most part — you could only buy a box of bricks and then you had to come up with something yourself. When sharing these memories, we realized that probably everyone our age built two things, a house (because they had little windows that were cool) or a car that didn't really look like a vehicle of any type (because they had really neat little rubber tires you could add to things).
But now, LEGO has all kinds of kits with instructions for you to make something that actually looks like something.
This was a game changer for us.
The first set I chose for us, though, nearly ended our hobby. It was a 510-piece Christmas wreath set that looked nice on the box, didn't have too many pieces and was for ages 9 and up. We could make something that a 9-year-old could, right? Right?
Well, let's just say we made a lot of mistakes that first time. Not with the set itself, but with how we sat while assembling it. Make note that if you and your spouse or partner both have lower back issues, trying to put together a LEGO on your coffee table isn't the smartest thing to do.
Patience, Grasshopper
While the build wasn't complicated at the end, it began to try my patience. The final pieces we needed to add to the wreath were berries. That wouldn't be so tough, I thought.
I put one on. Then another. Then another. See, I could be patient. I was quite proud of myself.
Then I heard a sound, "Ping!" as one berry flew off the wreath.
I put it back on.
"Ping! Ping! Ping!" rang out in our living room as all the ones I tried to put on kept coming off.
That was it. I lost it. I shoved myself away from the coffee table and, in as calm a voice as I could manage, said to my husband, "Please finish this. If they keep pinging off, I'm going to pick up this whole thing and throw it across the room!"
He knew I wouldn't do it. But he also knew that I had been really patient for a while, which was a miracle in itself, so I needed to take a break.
A couple friends even got into the hobby themselves and started building their own sets — the fun part — and then finding space in their homes for them — the tougher part.
Somehow, he finished the wreath with absolutely no pinging or flying berries, and it still hangs on the wall of our kitchen as an homage to our first build … and my first time being patient with LEGO.
That Christmas, my mother-in-law asked us what we wanted for our gifts. I asked for the Flintstones LEGO set, and my husband wanted a pirate ship.
During the holidays, we started with my set. I posted our progress on social media, and friends were complimenting us and began to ask for more photos as we went along our way.
A couple friends even got into the hobby themselves and started building their own sets — the fun part — and then finding space in their homes for them — the tougher part.
Multi-Builds
My husband's ship was a 3-in-1. This means that you can create one of three builds — or you can build one, then take it apart, build another, then take it apart and then build the third.
We knew after building the ship that having put hours and hours of work into it, there was no way on God's green earth that we were going to take it apart. But a 3-in-1 also meant for us back then, that unless we built the first ship in the set, we needed to open all the bags and dump them out on the kitchen table (a much more comfortable place to build) and sort them by color and type there.
That may not seem like a big deal until you realize how many pieces that set has. Want to guess?
It had 1,264 to be exact.
There were also four "minifigs," which, in LEGO terminology, are the minifigures or small people or characters in the sets.
We both began to notice something. Somehow, I was becoming more patient.
When you look at 1,264 pieces all at once, well, for patience-challenged folks like me, it looked insurmountable.
But we sorted them, and brick by brick, we created the ship he wanted.
We also both began to notice something. Somehow, I was becoming more patient.
After that, the two of us began buying and building LEGO sets galore. We had, in our early 50s, become AFOL, which stands for Adult Fans of LEGO. Today, we build simple sets as well as challenging ones.
Sometimes, we build for hours, other times, we fit in 15 or 30 minutes. We listen to music in the background, usually classic rock, and painstakingly figure out what pieces go where.
Sometimes, we build for hours, other times, we fit in 15 or 30 minutes. We listen to music in the background, usually classic rock, and painstakingly figure out what pieces go where. If we make a mistake — and we each have at different times — we go back to the instructions and take a section apart and piece it together again.
Besides finding this new hobby fun, we realized that we were more relaxed.
"Just as regular physical exercise increases endurance and strengthens muscles, engaging in mental exercise — whether it involves doing crossword puzzles, playing Scrabble, or building LEGO — fortifies our neural circuits," says Gary Small, chair of psychiatry at Hackensack University Medical Center. "The repetitive nature of some of these activities can be comforting — familiar experiences and tasks can reduce stress — but the novelty and challenge of the activity is the aspect of the experience that likely builds brain muscle. If the game is too easy, however, it will become boring. If it is too difficult, it will become stressful and no longer fun. The key is to find the 'sweet spot' wherein you can train but not strain your brain."
While we haven't "strained our brains," building LEGO has brought us even closer, given us something to work on as a team, and let us just have fun.
Win, win, win!
"Just as regular physical exercise increases endurance and strengthens muscles, engaging in mental exercise — whether it involves doing crossword puzzles, playing Scrabble, or building LEGO – fortifies our neural circuits."
Use It or Lose It
Besides creating mindfulness — because you have to stay in the moment when building LEGO — and helping me become more patient, Small says there's another great reason to embrace this hobby.
"The old adage, 'Use it or lose it,' not only applies to the body, but to the brain, too," Small explains. "I encourage people to find games and puzzles that they enjoy so they keep coming back for more. The scientific evidence is compelling that these activities are not only pleasurable, but they also protect us from cognitive decline over time."
"People who engage in more frequent and extensive game playing [or in this case, LEGO building] actually have larger brain volumes in regions that control memory and thinking," he says, "And they perform better on tests of memory than those who play games less often."
That's definitely a benefit, one I plan to tell my husband about because there's a bit of an expensive LEGO set that I really, really want to buy and build.
"But sweetie," I can see myself saying, "It will prevent cognitive decline!"
I just have to figure out how to prove that our bank account won't decline that much.
Perhaps I'll focus on the fact that since the Christmas wreath, I haven't wanted to throw any of our sets across the room. Because there's no way I'm going to put it back together again.
