JIGSAW PUZZLES

  Contrary to the rest of my life, wherein I hated puzzles, unable to complete the little kiddy ones of 10 pieces, over the past two years I have begun to work jigsaw puzzles. Not a great big expert, I have improved and am now working a crazy 500 piece one with no clues as to what goes where - all the same - so piece by piece this puzzle will be worked. I expect a long term involvement, but still, I do have a sense of pride, an 'atta' girl' feeling as I improved, as I learned to sense somehow where one piece fits or find the piece which makes the whole puzzle come together.

Best of all is the togetherness part of solving the puzzles. My kids will take out a huge puzzle and we will work together to put it together - as we knit together in a family way, with jokes, laughter and simple conversations. No competition as to who is winning or 'not fair', but rather cooperation and just fun. Try it and you will understand.

Sitting waiting for an appointment, I began to compare life of the world, in the world, with a jigsaw puzzle. The surprise piece that breaks the stalemate in finding the right piece to enable forward progress. The necessity of finding where something fits, just as we have to find the correct pieces in life. If we simply squoosh things together, forcing a fit, where it does not belong, the puzzle will never be solved. Proper order, proper placement, a final touch when success is met, and there ya' go. One cannot force a piece to fit in where it will not. Just does not work! 

Just so in the world at large today. We are trying to fit pieces of different puzzles into a Frankenstein one, pieces forced together to create an alien being, a puzzle which will not, cannot, ever be solved. The world is a huge jigsaw puzzle, as are our personal lives as we try to fit it all in until we come across a piece that does not belong. Where did it come from? What about the other puzzle now damaged? How can we make this work?

 Even think of the quality of the puzzle - its theme, its pieces, its difficulty level. Different puzzles often demand different methods of approach to solution. One has to be flexible, patient. One has to simply keep working at it, even if ten minutes at a time. It will stay there, waiting for you, just as the problems of the world will not go away. Unfortunately, the patience and thought necessary to discover new solutions to puzzles that have long been plaguing us are simply missing in action.

No one wants to fit in. Each one wishes to be the key to the solution, to be the hero of the situation. Then again - it will not work. Even if one would force a piece to fit, the fit will devolve, creating a new puzzle as to how to fix the resultant mess it has caused. At times so many pieces must be undone in order to find the place where we went wrong. Trying to get humans to do this in real life is the ultimate jigsaw billion piece one.

 Cooperation, patience, understanding of where something, someone, fits in. Understanding the process of thought in another. Understanding that cultures and values differ and must be taken into account. Understanding that the pace of solution discovery will vary. A square piece will not fit into an oval space. Tiny differences cause a piece which should fit in to not, and that must be respected, and another fit found.

This puzzle is way above my pay grade - and thank heavens for that. I have enough on my plate with the puzzles on my dining room table and the rotating pieces of my life puzzle. Perhaps if we approached life with solution and paths to solution in mind a la jigsaws, we might be better off. A pipe dream, I guess. Still .....

Today a piece has been found, almost fitting in and allowing the return of Paul Whelan home and then we can continue until we get all home.