So we had some time off over the Christmas holiday and family was in town for a few days. Thought it would be kind of cool to bring back an old school puzzle for something to do. Our family appreciates art and so this puzzle of ‘A Starry Night’ made its way under the tree to be opened on Christmas Day.
Once we made our way to opening the present on Christmas Day, I noticed a few things. The pieces had letter codes on the back of the them. There was also a chart that showed where the different quadrants of letters landed.
Immediately, I stated you couldn’t use those because that would be cheating. Looking at the puzzle, am sure you can understand that after a few hours of staring at similar pieces that all looked the same, capitulation set in. The puzzle would be impossible to undertake without some kind of help. And I mean, impossible.
Eventually, we settled on a system that at least gave the group of puzzlers half a chance.
Of course, we started with the edges of the puzzle first – finding the corners and filling in the rest. After that, the system took over.
We first sorted the pieces by letters. Then we sorted by horizontal tabs vs. vertical tabs. Then by weird shapes, like 3 tab pieces or pieces with those weird “spade” like shapes (we called them crows feet for some reason).
This gave us at least a fighting chance against the puzzle and allowed us to finish the puzzle, section by section.
After 2 more days, the puzzle was done and here is what I got out of it.
Looking at the finished product, it looks almost easy, like “yeah, this shouldn’t be so hard”.
In the middle of the process however, each piece was almost infuriating to try to find. What I got out of it in the end, was another affirmation of the life lesson, that even though you might not what each piece of the puzzle is, or where it fits, in the end, it’s part of a bigger picture that makes perfect sense when viewed in total.
Just. Like. Life.
There are so many times when things don’t go my way, people don’t follow through, or things look like they are falling apart.
There are also times when everything is going well, things fall together perfectly, and people do what they say and the results are very cool.
There are also other times when things just happen to fall together by luck. Like picking up a puzzle piece, moving to the correct section of the puzzle and it just intuitively finds its way home.
These past few days were a good reminder to me that I might now how it all fits together, but it will in the end. My job is to keep picking up a piece and trying to put it into the larger context.
It’s been a good few days and am grateful for the reminder.
-Just a dude.
Just a Dude 