The Missing Puzzle Piece

A few weeks ago an odd thing happened.  I found a single jigsaw puzzle piece on my living room carpet.  This was odd because I have not worked on a jigsaw puzzle for over a year (and I have vacuumed several times since then!); and because the last puzzle I did put together is complete and I have not disassembled it.  No missing pieces.

I showed the puzzle piece to a friend who sometimes works puzzles and has visited at my home, but no, she says it could not be from her either.

The puzzle piece itself is not so extraordinary: a sliver of the top of a white and grey cloud against a line of maybe blue mountain scape on a horizon, against a dark blue background. Let’s say it could symbolize a cloud’s silver lining—then, for me as the finder, what could be its significance?

images are from pixabay.com

Maybe that is just it: my missing piece of the puzzle of life is to find silver linings!  Sometimes I do need to remember that; not to stress out when things go out of kilter a bit, either in everyday life or in the larger scheme of worldly events.  Depending on one’s outlook or one’s position in a situation, there can always be a silver lining discerned: opportunities disguised as setbacks.

Still, this could be but one of my “missing puzzle pieces.”  As a journaling exercise I recommend answering What Is My Missing Puzzle Piece About? Brainstorm several possible answers and then explore or contemplate each response.  For example, for me (I always sample first any better endings journaling tool I offer to others), my brainstorming could include:

My Missing Puzzle Piece Could Be About:

• Taking more time to investigate a situation before acting
• Listening with greater, and longer, patience
• More free time for sheer enjoyment
• Dropping the mind in contemplation practice
• More laughter, at myself, and healthy humor generally
• Ways to arrive at greater clarity and conviction
• Acceptance, gratitude

And so on…guess I have plenty more Puzzles to solve!

How about You? How might you answer this probe?  What might your puzzle piece look like? What could it represent for you?

Change It UP!

This week I have noticed a theme in blogs and Tweets I’ve been reading from others. You have to fall sometimes, or take a step back, in order to go forward with greater strength and find success.

This past Thursday morning, while thinking about this theme, I dreamed about a football play. It was an unconventional play. The QB tossed the ball, underhanded, to a receiver some 5 yds ahead. He caught it, looked around, and saw the defense closing in; he could see he had nowhere to run. So, he threw it back to another receiver behind the QB. The player there caught it and, also seeing the defense about to close in on him, he threw it even further backwards to a teammate back near the other team’s goal posts. I knew as the dreamer that the intention was to open up an area without defensive players, so a player could run forward less obstructed after catching the ball from well behind the line of scrimmage. The last player trying to catch the ball, did not, but neither did the opposing team’s players intercept. The play was dead. But it had only been a 1^st or 2^nd down, so the same team lined up again at the line of scrimmage and the next play, the QB passed a regular forward pass that was caught for a 1^st down; forward motion was restored.

Writers and other artists are very often the Innovators for art itself and for culture. New ideas have to start somewhere and it often takes an unconventional thinker or artist to advance ideas and to “change up” how we think about or view the world. This is the basis , to me, of the Beatles’ wild success; it was not that they started by doing anything entirely new, but they ‘changed up’ the way it was being done. They set a new beat that perhaps changed up slightly the heartbeat of the collective world. They broke up thought forms by being unconventional in several ways. Their haircuts—at the time; in retrospect this seems silly now—astounded and offended many parents of their young, devoted fans. Teaming with the Maharaji, courting “revolution”, daring to “Imagine”, they changed up rock and roll and, with it, they elevated an entire generation around a basic theme: openly expressed, unconditional Love.

What’s the message here? CHANGE IT UP! What do we have to lose, really? We must be true to ourselves and forge new grounds where that seems the direction we are given to go with our talents.

If the backwards seeming football play I dreamed of this morning had succeeded, it would have been a wild success; it would have forged a whole new concept in how to move a football forward on the field of play. If, on the other hand, it had been intercepted back near the opposing team’s goal, of course it would be seen as a monumental failure. But, in the end, what does that matter? A “touchdown,” points scored, on this side or that, is only that. I admire the player who got the random idea to “Change It UP!” and started the ball rolling in an entirely new direction. In the dream, on the next play, his team moved conventionally forward again, anyway. Still, the game was forever changed. The other team now knew their worthy opponents might do ANYTHING to succeed. It would be more difficult to defend against this new form of play. It was, in my view, an artistic accomplishment. Perhaps, by the next game, it might become a formal new play in the team’s playbook, one they might incorporate into their team strategy, with tweaks, over time.

What, to you, is an example of this Better Endings principle of “Change It Up”? If you are forging new directions, pushing genre boundaries, Change It UP! Follow your OWN North Star!