The puzzle

For a few years now, we’ve had a kind of new tradition: during the winter, my husband and I work together on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. The pictures usually have something to do with places we’ve visited. Recently, I was finally able to put the last piece in the right place on a puzzle I got for Christmas.

However, it started out quite differently: I opened the box, took out the puzzle pieces, and then turned them all over and sorted them. With 1,000 pieces, that alone takes quite a while. After that, we usually start with the border—we agree on that—to get a feel for the size of the puzzle. Once that’s done, however, our approach is quite different. While my husband follows the template very closely, picking up each piece and trying to figure out where it belongs on the image, I am more likely to assemble the puzzle based on the color and shape of the individual pieces, only consulting the reference from time to time.

Somehow, it’s the same in life. Each of us has our own life—the shape of which is determined, among other things, by our gifts, our character, and our upbringing. But what we make of it and how we shape it is very different.

One person needs fixed rules and reliable guidelines, is unwilling to take risks, while the other tends to go with the flow and take whatever comes their way. Is one approach wrong and the other right? Hardly. It is probably more up to me to learn that the other person works differently and therefore has a different approach to life. Not wrong, just different. This certainly does not apply to all situations in life, and we would do well to let others correct us here and there, but basically, we can all learn to be less self-centered and let others do their own thing. Wouldn’t that make us more understanding people?

Disclaimer: Fortunately, unlike a puzzle, our lives are not to be understood as something we have to put together at the end to form a pre-designed picture; here, of course, the comparison to a puzzle is flawed. We have a lot of freedom to shape our lives. How do you shape yours?