For some strange reason I had a desire to assemble a puzzle. 

All I could think about as I was setting it out was how much this is a metaphor for life.

This was a used puzzle I checked out, so there is the nagging thought that maybe all the pieces are not there. Don’t you wonder if you have all the pieces in life?

So you start out with the frame of the puzzle. Just like life, you try to scope out what is expected of you in the culture in which you are born. How much of the table top will it cover?

The frame is built slowly with straight edges given to you by your culture, parents, school and religion. Here is where you are suppose to stay in the lines to complete your picture of life.

With a boxed puzzle you get to look at the picture on the top to try and make some correlation for all those scrambled little pieces, however, in life no one really knows what the puzzle will look like. So you start matching color swatches and strange markings that might stir up the wonder in your mind. What could I do if I put this piece here? Does this fit? Maybe this?

How many people have tried to put a puzzle together not knowing what it is suppose to be? It is very hard even with the picture on the box. So the puzzle reactions of life get the very same confused response. Some get frustrated because they don’t KNOW what it is suppose to be so stop with the frame. Some try to make it the picture in their head and will cram pieces together that everyone else can plainly see do not go together. 

We can be frustrated and try to put the pieces together spending hours, days, years constructing a picture depicted by an outside entity, working to fill the life expectations of others OR… we can paint our own picture and discard the frustration that goes on around us as others try to be something they are not.

We have to live in this construct but we don’t have to let it affect us. We don’t have to buy into the false absolutes handed by others. If we are ever going to change the things wrong in society someone somewhere outside of the frame is going to have to change things. 

It is lonely outside the frame, but you can see things out here. Maybe help repaint the picture to something that works? 

At the end of your life what will be said about you and the puzzle you constructed from all those little parts? Will they say you stayed in the lines and did everything everyone expected from you, or will they say you created your own puzzle?

You have to be true to yourself, explore your possibilities and follow those puzzle pieces offered you in life that cause you wonder. That is your journey and what needs to be fully explored. So you can have sung at your funeral, “I did it MY Way.”

There is beauty in every soul that is true to that still small voice. Find your voice and rejoice in the uniqueness that is you. 

Hugs, Pam (The Roadside Philosopher)