by oboelafitte
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by oboelafitte
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Puzzling Thoughts
“something that is difficult to understand or explain” (Oxford definition of puzzle)
I love doing jigsaw puzzles. We grew up doing them, my mom, my sister, me. On the beautiful Scandinavian-designed pull-out dining table. It was an awesome design. Took up only the space of a console/buffet. Just tried looking for one, but found nothing like mom’s. Beautifully made and so useful!
So back to—how does one approach a puzzle, in our case, a jigsaw puzzle? What does your method tell us about ourselves? And where does that come from, if anywhere?
I don’t remember how many pieces our puzzles were, but they seemed to take up the entire dining table! Maybe they were 1,000 pieces. We were encouraged to sort: of course first to find the edge, the border pieces, so we could get our bearings. Then by color/theme and shapes. That really helps, and makes sure you are always looking around.
Now I don’t intentionally sort. I sort a little bit, in scoops of pieces. General sorts. My sister shares her puzzles in progress, showing so much organization. She carefully sorts, and carefully builds up row by row of her puzzle. I’m a bit jealous of her patience. I just want to find a piece!
My puzzle table is a collage, very disorganized, some similar pieces in little pods of likeness. I like it this way for the most part, and sometimes I will try to sort a bit more, until I find that too tedious.
One on the NCIS episodes had a scene where Ziva David and Tony were supposed to be working on a jigsaw puzzle, and Ziva explains that you always start the puzzle from the inside, not the outside. I asked myself, “Self, do you really think it is possible that some people start a puzzle from the inside?”. Now it is just a puzzle? Puzzles as in life have multiple tactics and solutions.
(Ok, yes, NCIS (the original) is one of my go-to shows for R&R. My partner teases me that I need crime shows to unwind. Maybe that’s true, and if so, why?)
Well I love the mystery of the “who-done-it?”. That’s a puzzle in itself: the personalities, their background, their motivation.
It is almost scary to realize that we don’t all see the world the same way. And in fact, not almost, but definitely scary. We just have to fit together, somehow.
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