Life is Like a Puzzle

One of the many gifts I recently received for my 90th birthday was a jigsaw puzzle specially chosen by two of my grandchildren just for me. What kind of puzzle is that?

Well, first of all, it’s a puzzle consisting of 500 pieces. Any puzzle over 500 pieces goes in the waste basket unbuilt. I don’t think my poet’s brain can count that high. Along with that it is an “easy” puzzle or a “moderate easy” puzzle. “Difficult” and “very difficult” have to be smuggled onto the premises by my wife, who, like my youngest daughter, is not even afraid of a Jackson Pollack splashdown.

My gift puzzle says it is designed for Ages 8 and up, so I think I can handle this one!

Also, I expect for the scene depicted on the puzzle to be at least somewhat old-timey if not down right antiquated. My gift puzzle is entitled “Farm Cottage,”— not surprising, eh? Because of the architecture and the muted colors, I would say it is a British farm scene rather than an American.

You can not imagine any puzzle anywhere more suitable to an old grandpa like me than this one.

Probably over the years, my most favorite puzzles have been either American farm scenes with tractors and other farm equipment, or winter senes from Victorian England (I would rather put together huge sections of snow than either grass or sky). This may surprise my friends, but I have never liked puzzles depicting horses and cowboys.

I am sure I am not the only person who likes to compare life itself to a jigsaw puzzle! That’s such an obvious comparison, but so apropos.

We put the outer edges or boundaries of the puzzle together first, — that not only gives you guidance and direction in fitting the pieces together, but also in real life many boundaries and guidelines are necessary, and the outer perimeter of your life is most important.

To work a jigsaw puzzle, you have to develop methods or techniques, and certainly no life building can take place without methods and techniques, often learned from trial and error. Without trial and error, starting and stopping, there can be no progress. Plug it in! If it fits, it works! If it doesn’t, it doesn’t! Reality creates something that works! Theories used to prove theories create anarachy.

Of course none of us think out loud about these things when working a puzzle, — after all we’re doing it for fun! It is my conclusion that the main reason for doing a puzzle is fun!

Ray Spitzenberger is a retired WCJC teacher, a retired LCMS pastor, and the author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.

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