Life feels like a 5,000-piece puzzle some days.  The full image is vague at best with only random sections partially filled in. We’ve never seen the full picture and we don’t know what it’s supposed to look like, but we have to put it together anyways. There are thousands of pieces still needing to be connected.  We can see there might be some likeness coming to fruition, maybe a tree, the sun, dark clouds – is that a house over there?  But nothing concrete, not just yet.

With both frustration and glee and every feeling in-between, we trudge along anyways, excited by the highs of figuring out a 218-piece part in the top-right-middle that finally looks like something solid.  We get easily saddened by the lows of realizing a piece we once thought fit perfectly, never actually fit at all.  We kick ourselves for having wasted so much time on that one part. How did we not see it was the wrong piece for so long?

But when all the pieces fit and a small portion of the picture emerges, the joy is almost unbearable.  When a baby is born, when you fall in love, when you accomplish a long fought after goal – in those moments, figuring out the puzzle pieces of life seem well worth the effort.

Maybe when we began this journey, if we were lucky, we started out with a corner piece handed to us by our parents and mentors. Then, for most of us, our daily adventure (or torture depending on your perspective) is to figure out where the rest of the pieces are and how they all fit – if they fit.  Maybe connecting all the puzzle pieces of our lives is exactly the journey we’re all on.

Is life just a matter of figuring out the full picture of a 5,000-piece puzzle?

Maybe.

Just something I was thinking about today.