The Missing Pieces

Yesterday, I finished a jigsaw puzzle. It took me four months and it’s missing five pieces.

I hadn’t even sorted the edge pieces. It was too hard. All the pieces looked the same. I am not a quitter. But without stopping to ponder, I gathered the pieces and put them back in the box. Too hard. I didn’t give the puzzle away. I just stashed it on the shelf.

A month later I was given another puzzle. It seemed worse. It was a gift. I couldn’t throw it away. So, I cleared the table.

This puzzle was so detailed I needed reading glasses to work it. Though I am well into middle age, reading glasses are something I’ve avoided up to this point.

I began sorting pieces in December. I finished in March. For four months that puzzle spread across my dining room table.

I don’t consider myself a puzzler. But it seems that I have become one.

There were days with no progress at all. Other days, I’d sit down, listen to a podcast, slowly acclimating to the minuscule differences in the greens, the exact detail of the dainty yellow stars, the subtle nuances between the tiny pink petals.

Slowly, gently, I learned the patterns. What once appeared as a confusing wall of green came into focus - like staring and finally ‘seeing’ a Magic Eye picture.

I spent time with the puzzle. Unhurried. Present. I allowed its layers to surface, gradually. Slowly.

I finished it in March. At that moment I knew - it was time for the ‘too hard’ puzzle I had stashed away.

I walked to the shelf, picked up the box, and dumped the pieces out onto the table.

Immediately, as though rushing at me - the wall of sameness.

How in the world could I differentiate between these pink flowers and those?

I considered giving up again.

But I kept at it. Amazingly, I began to distinguish between the brush strokes in the yellows. The slight shifts in the shade of the rosy pink, the fucshia, and the magenta. I dropped my agenda - my desire to ‘accomplish.’ I found one piece. Then another. Then another.

Until I encountered a second issue - somehow, in the process of stashing and then unearthing pieces were missing. MIA. Did the cats eat them? How could they disappear? Along the right side and the top edge there remained gaping holes.

“How can I do the puzzle if I don’t have all the edge pieces?” I thought.

I almost gave up.

How could I work a puzzle with so many missing pieces? With holes in the edge? I ignored the voice and left the holes. I kept working. I finally finished yesterday.

Those edge pieces were still missing, along with one solitary hole right in the middle.

Missing pieces don’t stop the progress. Even when the “way we’ve always done things” no longer works, there is a path.

Life can seem too hard. Overwhelming. Impossible.

There is a strength in the staying. In the slowness. We think we need “Big Actions” to count as progress, but mastery is a myth.

Intention carves the path. Sometimes the way through isn’t a “success” or a “finish.” It is just the act of staying at the table with a gap in the border. That persistence leads to places you never thought were possible.