Puzzle pieces

I've been occupying myself with playing puzzle these days. I enjoy playing puzzle thanks to Kenia, my former roommate. We use to play online puzzle via https://jigsawpuzzles.io/. Whenever life gets hard, we play puzzle. I don't know why, probably, puzzling is a way of distracting from life problems. Or we just love creating new problems so we forget about the previous ones.

Last week, I went to the non-study library on campus (a.k.a rowden white library). The receptionist took out a new set of puzzle, since the previous one was already solved. I was so intrigued to play it, probably motivated by how often I played it with Kenia. It was a 1000 pieces puzzle with an image of butterflies (and dragonflies and many more I am not sure what species are they), probably dozens or even hundreds of them (I didn't really count sorry). The colours of the butterflies varied from red, violet, yellow, brown, etc. and as well as their combination. Some butterflies looked very creepy cuz their heads formed a skeletonish pattern. But some are very beautiful with wide wings and interesting patterns (there are wings with macca's sign). It was challenging and I was so determined to solve it.

Today, I officially completed it! It took me 5 days to complete it. However, I didn't really complete it since there are two pieces lost. Here is a picture of it.

I tried to search for the missing pieces, but I gave up since I was thinking about writing this post. There are way more important things to do than looking for the pieces. Anyway, it was indeed a refreshing game. It helps build focus and mindfulness. Mindful enough I forgot to eat my lunch for several days. But yeah.. whenever I play puzzle, it feels like the world is deafening. I will be so into the game I will not realize it took me 5 hours a day to play it. Is that mindful? or not? Well at least, it enhanced my focus.

The thing about puzzle for me, it reminds me of this quote from Girl in Pieces novel.

It indeed took very long time for me to complete the puzzle. And in certain ways, I did not put the pieces into a whole image. I put and tried different pieces to form smaller image, probably starting from the green butterflies first, then red, and so on. Then I would be able to, eventually, put them into a bigger image. I collected smaller images, piece by piece, to form a complete one. Even after I did complete it, some pieces were still missing. What about myself? I think the pieces within me would take even longer to be completed nor do I know if I am a complete one. In some ways, the puzzle represents me.

And after unnecessary reflection into the puzzle pieces and the missing ones. I recall a part of Courtney Cook's book, within last pages that hits me very hard, "Remind myself plenty of things live without being fully whole".

Lesson learned: it is okay to take your time to complete yourself (I suppose it will take your whole life). Piece by piece, missing pieces are okay. There is no better feeling than living your whole life accepting you are not perfect.