Putting the Pieces Together: Life Lessons From A Jigsaw Puzzle

In this episode, I reflect on what an unfinished jigsaw puzzle has taught me about uncertainty, direction, failure, and the quiet joy of discovering where things truly fit. If life has ever felt scattered or incomplete, this one’s for you. 💜🙏

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Chapters

• 0:47 Questions About Life's Puzzle
• 1:50 The Perfect Puzzle Table
• 3:15 Choosing the Right Puzzle
• 4:40 Beginning the Journey
• 6:00 Different Approaches to Puzzling
• 7:46 Life Lessons from Puzzling
• 10:45 Finding Your Place in the Universe

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Hey there, let's start with a few questions. What are you doing right now that feels too easy, or maybe too hard or not quite challenging enough? And when things fall apart, do you try to piece them back together again or do you walk away altogether? How do you decide which pieces of your life to focus on when everything feels scattered? These are just a few of the questions I've been pondering about what my unfinished jigsaw puzzle teaches me, and I've come up with a few insights that might resonate with you as you consider your own life puzzle.

Speaker 1: 1:27

So there's a table at our cottage that is perfect for puzzles. We found it in the basement, a relic from the 50s left behind by its previous owner. One person's trash, another's treasure. It was love at first sight Coffee table height with extendable leaves on both sides, and I knew exactly where to put it by the window seat next to the kitchen. I have enjoyed countless happy hours playing there, listening to jazz and nibbling on cheese and crackers while dinner was cooking. Note if you're eating while puzzling, there's a very good chance you'll bite a piece. Are eating while puzzling there's a very good chance you'll bite a piece.

Speaker 1: 2:12

I always have a puzzle going, no matter the season and, aside from our cat coming close to destroying it by skidding across the table, it remains there until it is complete, sometimes weeks, usually months. Even though the universal goal of puzzlers is to finish it, I'm never in a hurry to get it done. I find comfort knowing it's available to me when I want a meditative reprieve or a challenge. It offers me so many things. You might say. It's become a piece of my life that fits, and before you even start choosing which puzzle you embark on, takes some consideration. For me, the image itself is of ultimate importance. Well, not because I want to display it, which I never do. I disassemble mine within days and take it to Goodwill or share it with a friend or neighbor.

Speaker 1: 3:06

I look for puzzles that tell a story. If I'm going to devote time and energy to something, I like to get to know the characters and the world they live in. I'm drawn to scenes that are colorful, with lots of detail. There's nothing more satisfying than discovering the fishmonger's missing hat or reuniting a mitten with the rosy-cheeked snowballer in the holiday square. The level of difficulty definitely affects my degree of engagement. I quickly lose interest in puzzles that are too easy and I grow weary with the ones that are too hard. I find the ones with too much of the same color especially tedious. I remember watching my mom doing one when I was a little girl that was almost entirely blue. How patient she must have been. There must have been thousands of tiny pieces. It was an underwater scene with schools of fish. So, like Goldilocks, I look for puzzles that are just right, doable but challenging enough to keep me interested.

Speaker 1: 4:17

Getting started can be simultaneously daunting and exciting. It's an investment of time, trust and willingness to learn, of time, trust and willingness to learn. The moment when you open the box with the image so beautifully displayed on its cover, only to find it broken up into 1,000 or more tiny pieces, can feel overwhelming. It takes time to become familiar with all the pieces, to have a sense that things belong somehow, but feel unsure how they fit together. Daunting To be comfortable with, not knowing. It's the ultimate collaboration when you think about it, each piece as vital as the next to completing the puzzle, all coming together to create the whole. Oh, and PS never overlook the significance of each and every piece.

Speaker 1: 5:14

Have you ever got to the end of a puzzle and found there was one missing? How did that make you feel. Where in your life might you be disregarding the smaller, seemingly insignificant pieces of your life puzzle? I've learned that how you prepare affects the process. I used to just dump the pieces out and dive in figuring things out as I went along, and it worked well enough, but at the end of the day I ended up with a mess to clean up, not to mention the need to protect my progress from our marauding felines. I have since invested in sorting trays and a plexiglass cover to prevent any midnight catastrophes. But you know, everyone is different, and doing it for a while has helped me explore all the different ways I might proceed. You can learn a lot about someone by how they approach puzzle solving. Everyone brings something different to the table.

Speaker 1: 6:19

My mother-in-law fixates on assembling the framework, often staying up long after we have said goodnight, making sure all the edges are in place, and my adult daughter enjoys coming along and chatting and popping in a few pieces here and there, in no particular sequence, and then wandering off again. My husband when I can actually get him to stop doing something else, he's very intense. I can actually get him to stop doing something else. He's very intense. He puzzles in short spurts, racing to find pieces that fit quickly, and when they don't, he tends to lose interest. Sometimes I stare at the same piece over and over and over, trying to make sense out of it. It never ceases to surprise and delight me, though, when I realize it's not what I thought. It was at all. Out of context, without reference to the other pieces, it seems completely foreign, but once it finally slips into place, it's so obvious it couldn't have been anything else. It couldn't have been anything else.

Speaker 1: 7:29

When have you found yourself making judgments or assumptions based on what you think things are, without considering the whole picture? I've also noticed there's a certain momentum that builds as you near the end, and when it's finished it's often bittersweet. I have a question for you how do you experience the journey to completion, and when you arrive or finish, does it always look the way you thought that it would? You know? It reminds me how important it is to understand and stay connected to why, why we do anything and everything. For me, when I first started doing jigsaws, it was about family. I envisioned us gathering at the holidays and laughing and chatting while we sat around the puzzle, doing something together, working toward a common goal, and for a few seasons. That was true, but these days I find I enjoy puzzling even more when I'm alone. What is it that I like most about it? Really, when I think about it honestly, besides the inherent meditative nature of it, I most enjoy what puzzling has taught me.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Here are just a few things I've learned through my puzzle habit that I now carry into other areas of my life, puzzle habit that I now carry into other areas of my life. It's harder to find something when you aren't sure what you are looking for. Things come more easily when you have a sense of direction. Sense of direction, trying and getting it wrong first is exactly what leads to getting it right. Recognizing patterns is an essential part of understanding the the bigger picture. Not finding the right fit actually leads you to where you want to go. Most profoundly, though, puzzling has taught me this the places where we've tried and failed often help us in the long run, because we've been there before.

Speaker 1: 10:12

What doesn't feel like a fit right now may very well turn out to be the missing piece that connects where we've been to where we're going. So these are just some of the insights I've gathered, and I invite you to try them on and see what fits, or perhaps you'll discover new ones that become essential pieces in your own life puzzle. I leave you with wise words of Deepak Chopra, who reminds us I leave you with wise words of Deepak Chopra, who reminds us there are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle. What peace do you want to be? I'm Lisa Hopkins. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and healthy, everyone, and remember to live in the moment.