“The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity” – Douglas Horton
You know you have changed as a person when you’ve passed a life test with flying colours. A test that, years ago, you’d never have succeeded in finishing, for the simple fact that there was (literally) a piece missing.
Are you ready for a little paradox?
Over the Christmas holidays, me and my mother took it upon us to finish a puzzle of 1,000 pieces. Don’t ask me why, because neither one of us is into jigsaws, yet we thought this would be a fun challenge.
We started on Christmas Eve and a few weeks later (we didn’t work on it every day), this was the end result:
It feels like I spent hours looking for that missing piece, but I failed to find it. It could be anywhere or nowhere at all (maybe it wasn’t even in the box to begin with, who knows?). In reality, though, I’d given up my search in about ten minutes.
The absence of this one meagre puzzle piece would have felt like a thorn in my old self’s eye and I wouldn’t have been able to step over it for days, weeks maybe. Perhaps I’d never have been able to really accept the frustrating fact that one lousy piece was missing – a failure, even if 999 pieces are in place, the annoyance of that one piece missing would instantaneously destroy any feelings of success.
The new me sighed it off after a mere few minutes and carried on with her life. There’s more important things to worry about, I thought.
That’s your paradox right there: that one piece missing from the jigsaw is also a lost piece I’ve found in my personality. I’ve grown.
That silly we’ll-never-do-that-again* puzzle might be unfinishable, I am working on my own personal completion, one piece at a time.
How have your holidays been? Any pieces you’ve added to your own puzzle?
*My mum’s birthday is coming up and as a surprise gift I’ve ordered a custom made jigsaw, another astonishing 1,000 pieces, of her grandchildren. I’m afraid we’ll actually do it all again, but I hope this time we won’t be missing any bits
PS: I am slowly coming back to life and I’ve put “WP” in my journal. That’s code for “I hope to make time this week to read up on all if your blogs” (finally)!
I love jigsaw puzzles. We have about sixty stored in the garage right now. I haven’t done a real jigsaw in a long while, because I got addicted to digital jigsaws. But I cannot get those on my current computer, so I might pull one out of the garage some time soon.
I totally understand the frustration of one missing piece. My aunt loved jigsaw puzzles. My uncle didn’t much care, but as a joke he stole one piece off the table when she wasn’t looking. When she finished except for that one piece, he pulled it out of hiding and put it in–just so he could say he finished her puzzle. J.
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Haha, I actually found a piece my mother had been looking for for days, then hid it so I could give it to her to finish it, like your uncle did. But then there really was a piece missing… for a second I thought maybe my mother had done the same, but she swore she hadn’t.
I kind of liked the whole puzzling more than I thought I would. There’s something satisfying in finding that one piece that fits in that one spot.
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Yeah…that missing piece would keep me up at night lol Happy New Year Samantha! I hope this year is better than last ❤
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Happy New Year to you, too, Katherin! I think I finally realised that letting that missing bit get to me would be a waste of time and energy. No amount of searching or fussing over it would make it appear, so… best to just let it go 🙂
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