The Puzzle of Life

Jigsaw puzzles have always given me anxiety. Seriously, just thinking about doing a puzzle can increase my heart rate and cause my breathing to become shallow. I'm okay with the border pieces because they kind of make sense. But seeing all the other pieces in a jumbled, unorganized pile on the table, with nothing but trial and error to act as a starting place for fitting them together, makes me very uncomfortable. The beautiful, alluring picture on the box has been shattered, and the individual pieces do not much resemble it. Intellectually, I know all those pieces make up the whole picture and that they can be put together to create it. But emotionally, it has always felt overwhelming to try to recreate the picture, knowing that, at best, it will only ever be an imperfect replica when it is completed--not smooth and glossy like the one on the box, but coarse and a little fuzzy. And then, what if a piece turns up missing and you can never even have the satisfaction of completion?! Even in the best case, you will spend hours and hours on this thing that you will just turn around and destroy within moments and sweep back into the box. It seems silly when I write it down, but I have literally spent my whole life avoiding puzzles because these are the feelings they stir up for me.

This week, my ten-year-old came across some 1000-piece puzzles in our game cabinet (that were not purchased by me but somehow found their way into our house) and asked if I wanted to do one with him. In fact, I did not want to. But, I wanted to spend time with him, and I wanted to encourage activities that didn't involve a screen, so I said, "Sure." Predictably, because it is the way I have subconsciously conditioned my mind to think about puzzles, I started to feel the stirrings of anxiety as soon as the pieces tumbled out of the box. However, because I have been on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth, I was able to stop my anxious thoughts and ask some questions:  Why should I have such strong feelings about a puzzle--something that is supposed to be a pleasant past time? Where are these feelings coming from, and how can I turn them around? Can I push through them and actually enjoy the experience?

It was then that I realized a challenging analogy. This isn't just the way I have thought about puzzles: it has all too often been the way I have been in the habit of thinking about life. The picture of what life is supposed to be is beautiful, but the reality of life is a jumble of chaos with no clearly laid out path forward. And I have been guilty of approaching life with anxiety that has kept me, in more cases than I'd like to admit, from even beginning to really live. Creating order out of the chaos has felt overwhelming and uncomfortable, and I have too often avoided it altogether. 

Before the border pieces were even all in place, my ten-year-old lost interest in the puzzle and went off to do other things (mostly things that involved screens). I was tempted to slide the pieces right back into the box and consider myself lucky for having gotten out of having to do the puzzle. But the revealed analogy wouldn't stop playing in my head, and I felt I had no choice but to take on the challenge to prove to myself that anxiety wasn't going to stop me from doing hard things and that I had the power to turn something that has felt unpleasant to me in the past into something enjoyable. 

I was delighted to find out that this particular puzzle is broken down into quadrants--A, B, C, and D--and that each piece is labeled with the letter of the quadrant it fits in. This felt manageable to me. With relief I thought, "I don't have to work on the whole puzzle; I can just work on quadrant C." And the analogy grew in perspective. Sometimes life is just a pile of chaos, it's true, but oftener than not, there are clues about where the pieces go, even though the individual pieces still don't resemble the whole picture. It still takes a lot of trial and error to get things in the right place, but there may be more direction than we perceive on first glance. For example, there are a whole lot of things in my life that fit in the "Teacher" quadrant. Because teaching is one of my strengths, it keeps cropping up in different places in my life, fitting together with the other pieces in that quadrant to fulfill that part of my life's purpose. And when I take the time to fit those pieces together--even when it takes a long time and it feels uncomfortable and I inadvertently put several pieces in the wrong spot and have to try again--it feels really good to see the picture of what my life is about starting to develop.

I have not yet finished the puzzle my son and I started. But I have completed quadrant C, and I feel very proud of myself for that accomplishment. I feel prouder still that I was able to recognize thought patterns that have kept me stuck for much of my life and for being able to turn them around. With regard to the puzzle (and life), I am finding calm instead of frustration in creating order out of chaos. And I feel determined to complete it, even if I have to do it on my own. The more pieces I fit into place, the easier it becomes, making my initial anxiety seem ridiculous. Anxiety is rarely rational, but it is real. Thankfully, it can be overcome. 

One day the puzzle will be completed and then it will be broken down and put back in the box. But that's okay. I will not regret the time and effort spent on it. The puzzle was never meant to be permanent. The purpose of doing the puzzle was to find peace, enjoyment, and fulfillment along the way to creating a beautiful--though imperfect--picture.

Value

I have recently encountered several people, in a variety of situations, who are feeling the sting of rejection and have felt that it means something personal about their worth. This has included people losing jobs and struggling to find new ones, people in the throes of a difficult break-up, people who don't have the relationship they would like to have with their kids or parents or whomever. I have had many of these experiences myself and feel a visceral understanding of the deep pain rejection brings. Often times, when I realize I am encountering the same scenarios over and over in my personal life and in the lives of people around me, it prompts me to dig a little deeper and find the learning opportunity or the bigger message in it all. And, sometimes, that prompts me to write. So here I am. 

Here's what I've learned: Someone else's inability to see or understand our value does not make us any less valuable. Sometimes a person can be in possession of a treasure and not recognize its value. And sometimes a treasure may stay buried in the ground and unknown to the world. However, it is not less valuable just because the person currently in possession of it isn't aware of its value or someone has not yet discovered it. The value is inherent to the treasure. It's what makes it a treasure in the first place.

Of course, we all want someone else to validate us and tell us our worth, but this is not something we need. Sometimes it seems easier to wait for someone else to assign us value and then blame others when we feel worthless, but here's the thing: we are valuable regardless of what someone else thinks of us (or doesn't think of us) or whether another person even acknowledges our existence. We have inherent value, and it is our special task to find the value in ourselves. But sometimes we resist seeing and acknowledging our own value because that requires work. It requires questioning and maybe disagreeing with stories we've been telling ourselves for a long time and deciding to tell a new story. It requires blocking out the cacophony of voices all around us with messages that suit their needs but not necessarily ours. It requires taking back our power and being responsible for ourselves. It requires polishing those places that don't quite shine the way we'd like for them to. It means asking, "What am I making this mean?" And when we answer that question, asking, "But is that really true?" And then going one step further by asking, "How would I respond to a friend who is feeling this way?" and "How can I change the way I show up for myself when I feel this way?" And then, taking the action needed to change the narrative.

Depending on your particular brain wiring and life experiences, it may be especially difficult to see your own value. Or you may feel like seeing your own value "doesn't count" or makes you arrogant. But listen, friend: YOU ARE VALUABLE, AND YOU DON'T NEED SOMEONE ELSE TO CONFIRM THAT FACT. You have the power within you to acknowledge and live your value whether anyone else acknowledges it or not. 

We don't really live in a world that encourages us to see and truly appreciate our worth. When we do it anyway, we are often told we are vain, conceited, arrogant, boastful, and lacking humility. (You can cross a line here, but just acknowledging your worth does not even get you close to that line.) We are also constantly told, in a variety of ways, by a variety of people, that we don't have value or that we aren't enough unless we [fill in the blank]. In fact, marketers depend on their ability to make you feel "less than" so they can sell you whatever is going to make you "enough." It's a lie. Plain and simple. You have value. You are a treasure. And that fact isn't changed by someone else's inability to see it or acknowledge it. Allow yourself to fully absorb this message. And then live every day of your life in that truth. When you accept your value for what it is and don't look for validation outside of yourself, you will be amazed at how much you lessen the pain of rejection in your life and are able to fully embrace the valuable life you've been given.