(no subject)

When people are confused about something or trying to figure out some difficult problem in our lives, we may think about it like it's a jigsaw puzzle--we're trying to fit the pieces together, looking for new pieces, attempting to integrate the new pieces into the big picture. But in life, we often get new pieces given to us by folks who have already tried to mash pieces into the shapes of the pictures in their own heads. When we get those pieces, they may be a bit distorted from their original shapes, simply because the person who had them before us was sure they belonged together in some way they were never really made for. So one person gives me a set of pieces arranged so they'd fit into an image of fuzzy, cuddly puppies in a basket; another person gives me another set they'd assumed belonged in a picture of a green scaly dragon holding an ill-equipped knight in between her paws; I'm sitting here adding these new pieces to the ones I already had, trying to figure out how they fit in a picture of a black bear sitting in the Oval Office playing a drum kit; and what none of us realizes is that all the pieces should go together to show us a mime dressed in nothing but suspenders and a tutu, standing in a field of poppies, holding a single long-stemmed, dead rose in his hand.