Thursday, September 24, 2009

Life and jigsaw puzzles

What the heck.
I am back to add my thoughts on this after all.

.........

How life is like a jigsaw puzzle

1. You are born without knowing how to do one.

2. Your job is to complete your puzzle before you die.


Symbolism

Every piece represents another person in your life. Each piece is equally precious, uses equal space, and will be important in some way to the final result. Keep this in mind. Always.


Overview

Your job will be to figure out all the relationships appropriately, guide the pieces to their spots. To do this it will be necessary to develop your powers of discernment and perception. You must learn to see things from different focal lengths.

Practical tips

1. Be sure you have adequate lighting. Sufficient table space. Take care to not drop pieces on the floor where they could become lost or dragged off by the cat.

2. Build the boundary first. It will save you loads of time and angst, and possibly regret.

3. Be gentle with the pieces. They will have to be handled many many times by you, and by others who do the puzzle. Don't create unnecessary wear and tear on anything.

4. Always work from easiest to hardest. You'll gain confidence and experience that way.

5. Go ahead and group your pieces by color, by shape, by orientation. This is not equivalent to political or economic discrimination, this is just you sorting things out for yourself privately in your own personal life. You ARE allowed to have a personal opinion on your own life. On your own puzzle pieces. From your own perspective. On absolutely every issue/aspect. In fact it's a requirement if you are to become a thinking person.

6. Keep the boundary between a) your own discernment and b) unfair social discrimination, clear, clean and separate, and refuse to tolerate any unfair institutionalized structured discriminatory practices in outer life. (See "Symbolism," above.)

7. Take your time grouping the pieces, laying them out carefully. You can do this any way you want. It will save you time in the long run. And you've got lots of time. A life time.

Along the way

1. You'll naturally be drawn to some pieces more than other pieces. Don't worry about it. Just remember that you'll need every piece eventually. Consult the 'big picture' frequently.

2. When you get stuck, you'll finally start to widen your visual field, and will notice some little humble piece that you had totally overlooked because it just never stood out for you. This is natural. Don't worry about it. It will be exactly the right piece for that spot where you tried some other piece umpteen times already and it just wouldn't fit.

3. You'll get a nice burst of pleasure out of each tiny victory. Savour the pleasure.

4. When you get frustrated, work on a different part of the puzzle, or else just go do something else for awhile and come back later. Your refreshed retinal receptors will see details they couldn't when your eyes were tired.

5. Invite others to help you if you wish. If you'd rather do it all by yourself, that's OK too. Your choice.

6. You will have a chance to enjoy, sense, experience and integrate all the instinctive emotions that came for free when we were born. You'll experience everything from the slog of repetitive drudgery and continuous frustration to the thrill of the hunt and the sense of triumph. The glue that holds all this together and keeps everything moving along on track is hope. Hope is really all we have for motivational fuel. Nurture hope. One day your puzzle will be complete.

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