The truth is, those who diligently seek to learn of Christ eventually will come to know Him. They will personally receive a divine portrait of the Master, although it most often comes in the form of a puzzle – one piece at a time.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Consider this, you are playing a game where you have to solve certain pieces of puzzle to win the game.The game is all what you can think of at that particular instant, its thrilling, exciting, amazing and at the same time terrifying,apprehensive and daunting .You are totally occupied by it, you live it, you breath it,you really want to win it!!Would it be too far-fetched to equate that game with your life?What would you do if somebody comes to you at a particular time when you are failing all the puzzle and somehow are trying to get a hang of it and told you “Son,all this is worthless, don’t pursue this rat race, real happiness is laying back, listening to God,and meditating”.Well, I don’t know about you but i will punch this guy in his gut and tell him to buzz off.
So does that mean you got to be on edge 24×7 ? No, certainly not, If the continuous search for puzzle doesn’t kill you, stress will.Your family,kids ,parents and siblings all are important to win this game. A little fun is important, healthy even, but not constant fun.Don’t make your life an entertainment for others to laugh on.You don’t need the reputation, trust me!!. So what do you do?
Well!! There is no “one size fits all” answer, what i can reveal here in this post is you have to find your own way to be at peace with your chosen path and you should be satisfied with it, nobody else,because the consequences of your decision will always stay with you, either positive or negative.Your game is your game, some people like rock climbing ,they try a couple of times,as soon as they fail they go home to try something else. Some people would even die for their rock climbing goals than not climb, they try until they succeed.So that’s the difference as simple as you can put it.You don’t need to die, but you need to breath your goals and dreams.
Sometimes deciding what to do with your pieces of puzzles could seem a daunting task, hey any normal person would not be too sure whether he or she would like to dedicate her entire life for something he/she isn’t even aware about completely , right??Yup!! It is actually true, how can you truly decide what to do with your entire life when you are just introduced to booz ,cigarettes and a little booty to go along with it if your cute!!(i was not 🙁 ). So its hard, i get it, we all have different phases in life and different priorities at different times, like hormones and stuff.So how could anybody focus their attention and figure out what to do with their life? how to pick which game to play?
Well!! Use the Puzzle solving approach, what did you do when you solved your first Jigsaw puzzle which you had no clue about how to solve?You were given some random pieces and told to assemble the pieces to complete some picture, now a completed picture is an important aspect of this approach.Imagine you have a trillion pieces of your life’s jigsaw puzzle and you don’t have a completed picture to match along with what you were given, just imagine the dilemma of the guy who is assembling random pieces, anything that is fitting together to find some meaning whatsoever.What would you call that guy?CRAZY!!! Isn’t it , still most of us are doing this exact thing daily, trying to find an iota of meaning in our lives without a completed picture of what we want to be.
You don’t need yoga and deep meditation to understand what you should do with your life, just pull out a sheet of paper and write down what all you can do.Sometimes what you can do would be too little to actually make an impact in your life, so what do you do??You step up, and start doing things which equip you with skills needed to move ahead to your dream or completed jigsaw puzzle picture. If you don’t have a completed picture in your mind of where you are headed and what kind of person you want to become, trust me , you are heading wherever the wind takes you, the wind can be anything,your alcoholic friends, your cheating wife, your irritating siblings or neighbours, it could be anything.You cannot stop the wind, it is too powerful, you can change your course however, you can change your habits , friends, place and your life to the ideal or completed picture you imagine it to become or imitate.
Now you would say, wow!! This would be really tiring and i don’t think i could do all this , i really wanted to be a singer but i have not sung in last 10 years,I am here to tell you, its ok, its all ok, we all drift sometimes in the wind, it doesn’t mean you can’t do this anymore.All you need to remember is the jigsaw puzzle technique!! Now, you have a completed picture in your head but you are having trouble starting, which pieces to pick up first??
Hmmm, how about starting from the head of the picture, may be starting from the toes will be easy, may be if i could just get the corner pieces first, i could make some head away.Just start, yes!! , its as simple as said, just start from whichever pieces you pick up first, analyse it , give a thought about it, look at the picture and then figure out where this piece could possibly fit, if you can’t fit this piece just keep it at the pending pieces stock and pick another one from the not tested stock, sooner or later you are going to find at least one piece which would be so obvious to fit in the puzzle that you would fit it immediately.This would be the beginning of your picture and this would start the process of completing your picture, slowly but surely.
Remember though, as we all know jigsaw puzzles get boring after a while as we spend time on it and we all have sometimes left the puzzle unfinished or destroyed whole of it to go play something else. Remember!! doing that would just destroy your completed picture, the picture of your success in your mind, so what to do???Well!! Discipline and habits are two painful words you need to drill into your mind and body and teach yourself to follow instruction given by your mind rather than instruction given by some other organs and i know you exactly know what i am talking about.All you need to do is to continue working on your life’s jigsaw puzzle while having the time of your life.Its hard, its really hard, it requires a lot of discipline and habit formation to force yourself to do something daily without fail when some of your friends are enjoying their way to excessive entertainment .Don’t wake up at the end of a movie in somebody’s else life.Make your own movie where you are the lead role, whether people like it or not.
So remember the Puzzle Approach, if you take it one step at a time, you will never go wrong, you might be losing few battles, but in the long run you will win the war, you will have your completed picture, whatever you want .
Now there are exceptions, you could get ill or die while pursuing your dreams, a close loved one could die while you are pursuing your dreams and puzzle which might affect you negatively, a lot of things can happen which might stop you one inch from your gold mine.Now how can you reconcile with this fact??Well!! If you get ill, you can take some rest and recover and again pick up the pace, you might get late but you will eventually reach the destination.If you die, well you are dead!!, say hi from heaven!! Jokes apart , Just imagine,what a great life it would be to die in the pursuit of your dreams and goals, how thrilling it would be to see yourself fighting not just the difficulties of life but god himself to attain your completed picture, to complete your puzzle.What an honour it would bring you even after you die, that you would ask your close loved one to write on your tombstone ” Here lies the man who did everything to pursue his dreams and who did not quit until the last moment of his life”, just imagine that.If a close loved one dies,after a duly needed time of grief, you should channelise the negative energy which might surround you to support your vision and dedicate your pursuit for the ones who are not here with you anymore.Any person who loves you would always want you to do good for yourself and that is how you reconcile those negative environment and surroundings.
All in all, this game has no rules, no limitation and unlimited opportunity mixed with difficulties, its the player who has to understand this concept, well i guess i could at least help somebody with this advice, i hope anybody reading this could rejuvenate his/her life like i have revitalised mine.Take care ,god bless, feel free to comment!!PEACE!!
