January 5, 2013

PUZZLED

Earlier this week I helped work on a puzzle.

It was largely an exercise in haphazard guessing.  You know how it is: you look at a gap in the puzzle and try to find the piece that will fit there, but you try dozens of pieces that almost fit before you find the one that does.  There are a lot of what feel like educated guesses along the way – based on the surrounding pieces, it seems as though the color and shape of the missing piece should be obvious.  When the piece turns up, you discover that you were imagining it all wrong: you thought it was mostly red, but in fact it has a lot of green on it that you couldn’t have predicted.  The educated guess was not as educated as you thought.  Even knowing (because you’ve been peeking at the box) what the picture will look like when the entire puzzle is finished, you will still make hundreds of little errors when it comes to specific pieces.

I always do this, constantly and without realizing.  I imagine places before I visit them and people before I meet them.  I think I know enough to guess, but guessing is a dangerous business.  Someday I’ll learn and stop creating such detailed expectations.  Surprise me, I’ll say.  And just like a missing puzzle piece, it will.

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