Years ago I heard a lecture where the speaker compared life to a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t remember who it was, but the concept stuck with me – how all the different experiences in our life appear to be unrelated, like pieces in a puzzle, and until you see the big picture, it may be incomprehensible how they would all fit together. But once you see the big picture, it all makes sense.

I brought it up with two of my kids today as we worked on a puzzle in honor of National Puzzle Day (Jan. 29). One piece looked like it was part of a Stormtrooper, but really it turned out to be part of Luke Skywalker’s sleeve.  That reminded me of the “life is like a jigsaw puzzle” story so I shared that with them.  Maybe someday they’ll pass that message along.

The puzzle we did today was in a sealed plastic bag, but there was no box with a picture so we weren’t sure exactly what the picture should look like, only that it was “Star Wars”-related because of the light-sabers. There must be an allegory in that, too. That even though you may not know the big picture, you just keep putting the pieces together as best as you can. These pieces have images of fur so they probably will all fit together to become Chewbacca and all of those pieces have the blue light saber so put those together, and so on.

As we were getting close to finishing it, my youngest son commented on how much fun it was and I realized that we used to do puzzles more often a few years ago, but he  was probably too young at the time so doesn’t really remember it. Poor third child.  It was a lot of fun, and I think it’s something we’ll be doing again soon.

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