Variations of Disconnect - The Philosopher Speaks

I am doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the interior of the Church of Notre Dame. I am almost through with just the roof to be finished.

Life's a jigsaw too. All the different people and events are the different pieces.

The other day, I was looking for one piece that would fit in with one of the pillars just beside the pews. I was searching for a piece with a particular pattern that was present in the pillars.

The people we know and events past are the completed parts of the puzzle. We always look to solve new problems by precedents and pattern matching. If a new person walks into our life, we always compare him/her with our existing group of friends and wonder if he/she is of the same "type" and will "fit" in...

It was driving me crazy that none of the pieces I could find would fit in! I went to other parts of the puzzle but kept returning to this one piece.

We keep searching for the one friend who will always be in sync with us, our thoughts, our activities....

After a couple of days, I was just contemplating my puzzle over coffee and fiddling around with pieces randomly fitting them in different places. And voila! A piece magically fit into the pillar that I was struggling to complete!

Someone, once in a while, stops by and without any provocation or reason, brightens our life at just the right time: an acquaintance you thought you were not close to, a mentor, an advisor, a neighbour, a friend... I would like to call it serendipity...a random kind act of the universe!

The funny thing is that I had come across this piece when I was looking for the piece but ignored it because I thought it didn't fit into the pattern.

I wonder how many opportunities/interesting people I ended up missing because of this weird quality by which we always look for extensions of existing (sometimes stale, unhealthy!) patterns in each and every new experience/person.

It fit beautifully into the puzzle and I wondered how I could've been so blind! One particular pattern was so strongly embedded in my mind that I ignored what was, even if a bit different, staring me in the face!

Yet, if I just alter my vantage point a wee bit and look at people/events with a fresh outlook, I will see that they fit into the jigsaw of our life in a beautiful way in ways I didn't even expect and complete my life perfectly!

I know it seems like too much to draw generalizations about life from a jigsaw but then this is the Philosopher from my Senate who is shouting at the top of his voice compelling me to hear him...:)

Here are pics of what my jigsaw looks like now. Isn't it pretty? :)



And here's what the finished version should look like: