I’ve been an avid puzzler for most of my life. I was the one who would drag out the puzzle board made in my dad’s shop and beg and plead with others in my family to do a puzzle, even if it was a puzzle we had done time and time again.
There’s something about putting a picture together piece by piece, bringing order out of chaos, that calms my innate anxiety. There is a big picture we are working to create piece by piece.
This is what I think we have been missing. Rather than working towards a big picture together, we are clinging to the pieces of our individuality in the same way my brother would always hide the last piece wanting to be the one who clicked it into piece completing the puzzle.
A puzzle is comprised of pieces that are interconnected: a little pink smeared on the edge of a mostly yellow package. The top of an i one one piece with the base of that same i on another piece. And as I search for those tiny details, small ways that one piece connects with another, I am reminded of the grave importance of doing the same with you.
Even if we cannot directly connect, I can connect through other pieces, other individuals I have met, other places I have found, other experiences I have had and see that although we might be on the opposite end of this great puzzle we are still connected.
We cannot be whole without each other. The big picture can not be complete without each piece clicking into place. If we aren’t willing to work together, be joined together, be connected together, then there’s no way the big picture will come together.
And no one likes coming to the end of the puzzle and realizing there are pieces missing. No one likes coming to the realization that all the hard work and time and energy spent has only resulted in a broken, fragmented, fractured picture.
We can create something beautiful together if we are but willing to connect, truly and wholly to one another.