The puzzles of our lives

We spend so much time trying to find that perfect puzzle piece that fits, searching for the perfect job, the perfect friend, the perfect degree to take in university, the perfect soulmate.

Our lives are like enormous incomplete jigsaw puzzles -- we constructed our straight edges from childhood; our parents taught us values, we learned how to walk, to speak, to listen and to act. We learned when to smile and when to cry, when to walk ahead and when to sit by. These are basic emotions and skills, picked up without our trying.

But as we grow up, we need to build inwards from this border -- things suddenly become complicated. Our sky is made of billions of shapes of the same hopeful blue, our earth millions of shades of brown and green. We dream so many dreams, of a better future, of a happy future -- there are so many ways to achieve it. Our present is full of different factors, our friends and family, our career, education... as we build and build and reach the horizon, how do we connect our future to our present, our dreams to our reality?

If we defined ourselves as a single individual puzzle piece, "me" -- where do we sit in that puzzle? Are we only concerned about our present situation and situated in the earthen browns? Or do we spend too much time with our head in the clouds and float amongst the blues?

Or, perhaps you are like me, stuck in that awkward, tenuous, fuzzy border between blue and brown. Perhaps you are looking for the next piece in your puzzle, to fit your grooves and protrusions. There are those myriad pieces that definitely don't fit -- perhaps the grooves are too small for your sticky-outy bit, or perhaps too large and you slip out of it too easily, disinterested. There are then those millions of pieces that look like they fit, but as you try to branch out from those, you realise you were mistaken; it might take a second, it might take years. A doctor who turns to acting, or a lawyer who turns to comedy. Who are we to know what the future will hold?

We could spend eons searching for that perfect piece that fits exactly where it should. Some people are lucky and get it right the first time, but for the majority, we just choose pieces that look like they fit. Many go back and change it later... For a puzzle with so many pieces, in a world so big, and where the pieces look so similar in appearance (is this shade aquamarine? or perhaps cerulean, turquoise, sky blue, cornflower blue, azure, maya blue, royal blue?? should I go into criminal law? or perhaps international law, property law, contract law, constitutional law, art law, civil law??) -- we could spend our entire lives paused and searching for that one piece, but how will we know when we have found it?

After all, how are we to know that a perfect piece that fits exists at all? In a puzzle this big, with all the colors of the visible spectrum and limitless opportunity in our world, we have the power to choose any piece we want and build our puzzles from there. Each of us can choose a fundamentally different puzzle to build; it is not like our lives are predestined to show one picture and one picture only -- if we do not like this red piece here, perhaps we will replace it with a magenta one, or even take a risk and exchange it with a lime green! There are so many pieces in the pack we have been given that there is no risk of ever running into that notorious missing piece!

Even in the end, when we try to look at the big picture of our lives, it is only ever partially complete. There are so many pieces to use that it is impossible to ever finish a full picture in with only 86400 seconds in a day. So, the real question is... with the time you do have, what kind of picture will you construct?