One Piece At a Time

I’m not a jigsaw person. At least, I wasn’t for the first 39.5 years of my life. I’d no idea where to start. 

Turns out the border is a good first step. You have the outline then. And you sort the pieces by colour and put them in zip lock bags, or plastic containers if you have them. The pieces may or may not go together to form the digitally enhanced image we have on the front of the jigsaw box, but some of them will. 

And then you choose something that stands out in that image, find the corresponding bag, and start placing its pieces side by side. Again, the pieces seem a jumble, the possibilities are endless. But you turn the pieces round and round and eventually, or maybe sooner than you expect, you find two pieces that fit together. And then another and another. And then you feel you’re really doing it. Just the lake, or a log, or a patch of sky, but that bit’s done. And then it’s kind of addictive.

For about six months last year, doing this puzzle was my meditation. Sometimes I’d allow myself ten minutes after breakfast, before sitting down at my desk. Or an hour on the weekends. I let my partner help one Saturday night (in all fairness, it was his jigsaw puzzle. I bought it for him after The Great Search to track down that specific brand, that specific image, two birthdays before). 

Some days I didn’t even look at the puzzle. There were weeks when it sat abandoned on its cardboard mat on our study floor. It collected fluff and ants (?!) and the cardboard mat and the pieces were chewed and messily spat out by my cat.

The concentration and immersion required to undertake this jigsawing took me by surprise. I found that in those moments when I was jigsawing, I did not think about anything else. I simply could not. I had shapes to study, to physically move on the table and in my head. My eyes would move from the image on the front of the box to the jigsaw and back again. Peer. Squint. Look down again. Try this. Try that. 

The positions of the last few pieces revealed themselves in a rush. The landscape that looked back at me as I stood back to marvel at it, was beautiful. Serene. But it was done, and I was a little sad. A sense of achievement? Yes, of course. But I realised then that all the enjoyment, the moments of satisfactory glee, came from seemingly little discoveries of connections. They came throughout the process of trying and discarding and putting things together, rather than at the end when there was no more to be done.

Made me think about writing. The manuscript. The book deal. The goals we set. And that funny thing called life.

Perhaps it’s time to start another jigsaw. And take it one piece at a time.