It’s the season for jigsaw puzzles in our house. Our dining table has been cleared and right
now there are two 1000-piece puzzles being constructed on the ends. Brian’s working on Van Gogh’s The Irises,
which is too difficult for me. So I bought a puzzle that was my skill level.
Every time I work on a jigsaw puzzle, the way I eventually see distinctions I
didn’t at first strikes me.
When I first dump the puzzle out and turn the pieces over, I
pile the edges together and make some large groupings by color. I’m not sure
how many hours I need to immerse in the scene for finer differences to emerge. In this puzzle—portraits of women in a museum—the
frames seemed all the same at first, but each one is slightly different. The
blues take on more subtle variations of shading, etc.
It feels magical when I find the exact piece for a spot
after scanning what had once been an undifferentiated mass.
In life, what have I clumped together without seeing differences?
It might be a group defined by race, ethnicity, gender, income, caste,
occupation, age, etc. It could be a geographic, educational, or political
affiliation. But not until I immerse myself in the actual community, through
literature, media, or in-person connections, does the rich variety within every
group get revealed.
What I know for sure is that the pieces don’t change; I do. It’s
my perspective that grows more sophisticated because of the time, attention,
and lack of judgement I bring. If I hated all the green puzzle pieces, I wouldn’t
be as likely to notice variations. While some pieces/people are more
immediately visible, every piece is essential, and ultimately we are all
linked. It matters to look on the floor for missing pieces so that each one
gets placed into the whole, creating a complete puzzle, a healthy community, and
a well-functioning nation. We can’t afford to leave a single soul behind.
Only when I invest time, attention, and curiosity to the
uniqueness of non-interchangeable people and ideas does something whole and
holy emerge.
