Today I was inspired by something I witnessed at my job as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. One of the patients, a highly educated, professional woman was putting together a multi piece jigsaw puzzle of a house on an expanse of grass with a blue sky behind it. As we were talking, she was nonchalantly multi-tasking and one by one fitting each piece in its appropriate place without hesitation.  “How do you do that?”, I asked her incredulously, since my ability to construct puzzles is halted when I get past the kindergarten image of Blues Clues.  She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know, I just do it.”  For her, it was a no-brainer.

It occurred to me that puzzles are a perfect metaphor for life. For some people, their pieces fit nicely and neatly into pre-cut slots and there is no wiggle room. There is only one way to do things and one way to be in order to belong. For some, fitting the pieces in place, requires trial and error (that would be my way); and if one piece doesn’t match up, you know that another will. Still, for others, it calls for scattering all of the pieces on the table, looking at the image on the box for guidance, matching color and size and shape; a lengthy process. Whether or not you enjoy the experience is up to you. You can put it together as a solo endeavor or with a group. If you didn’t have the box as a ‘map’, you would need to discover what it will become. And, you may have to live in the ‘just don’t know’ until the puzzle is complete.  The other thing we found out today was that one piece was missing. And I told her that sometimes we just have to live with something feeling incomplete.  She nodded and smiled with tears in her eyes, knowing that she did have some missing pieces in her life at the moment, that with time and love and healing experience could fill as best she could.

And for your listening puzzle putting together pleasure..

Fleetwood Mac’s Jigsaw Puzzle Blues