Today I told one of my friends that our lives are like a Puzzle and that, while we may know our particular puzzle piece very well, we can never see the board. That’s the great mystery of life! Someone has finally figured it out! (*Insert thunderous applause here*) But it’s not really that simple, is it?

The whole conversation got me to thinking about Puzzles. It reminded me of the hours I spent last year hovering over puzzles, trying to forget the storm of sadness inside of me. I turned to puzzles at one of my hardest times because putting together a puzzle was all of the Purpose I could muster at the time. It engaged my mind and got me to thinking about something other than the flood of grief that had set down on me.

I’ve recently started a freelance writing business. When I was thinking about what I’d like to be my logo, the first thing that jumped out at me was puzzle pieces. If ever there was a symbol that said everything there was to say about my life, that would be it. I’ve wrestled over puzzles my entire life.

Not the actual jigsaw puzzles. That’s a fairly new one for me. No, the puzzles I am talking about are ones that are much heavier and deeper than a simple blog post can hash out. However, the ideas behind them are fairly simple. And I want to share them in this post.

The Generational Puzzle

In the past couple of years, I’ve begun a bit of a tradition. There are lots of TV shows that I absolutely love. If I don’t limit myself with these shows, I will binge them over and over again until I’ve sucked all of the joy out of them. So, instead, I give myself permission to watch them all the way through one time a year.

At the beginning of the year, it’s Breaking Bad (and Better Call Saul). When I finish that, however, I’m usually left with a bit of a void as to what to start watching after. Last year I stumbled onto the show This is Us, and it pulled me in hook, line, and sinker. The thing that gets me about this show is that it shows how clearly our actions in one generation can find its way down in the generations that come after.

Your family tree is one big puzzle. The experiences that shaped your life were set in motion long before you even existed. Whatever your circumstances, whether you grew up with two loving parents or not, they were a part of the puzzle board long before your puzzle piece was fashioned.

At first, this realization can feel constricting. It opens your eyes to the lack of choice that you really had in getting this far in your life. However, when you see the role that others have had in shaping who you are, you begin to realize that you are playing this dual role of being shaped while you are shaping others. You have a responsibility to the generations that come after you to find your place on the board.

The Internal Puzzle

That leads us to the mother of all puzzles. It’s the fallow ground of your unconscious mind. It’s the literal dumping ground of every experience you’ve ever had mixed with every piece of genetic material that came before you. It’s a vast abyss that exists inside of you. And it scares the bejesus out of anybody who ever looks on it from the sideline.

Before you can even entertain the idea of trying to put your puzzle piece on the collective board in any intentional way, you must first master the beast within. That means facing every little piece of yourself that is scared, angry, hurt, and depressed. You’ve been carrying those emotions deep within you for most of your life. And those emotions are the key to the door that leads you to a life of choice.

If you don’t face the internal puzzle…the “why” of your existence…you will be tossed from experience to experience like a boat on the ocean. Your experiences will choose you, and the puzzle board will smash you somewhere you probably don’t want to be.

The Relationship Puzzle

When I was a kid, a book about relationships came out that changed the world: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. In my naivety, I read this book thinking it would help me to better understand women. It must not have helped that much because I grew up, got married, and then wound up divorced and bankrupt.

The problem with relationships, it seems, is that we can never truly know what the other person (man or woman) is thinking. If we could only read minds, this puzzle wouldn’t be a puzzle at all. It didn’t dawn on me until years later, however, that I didn’t need to understand women. I needed to understand myself.

The key to making relationships work is having a strong sense of self. You must first learn independence and all that entails before you can begin to understand interdependence. You must present yourself as a whole and complete person before you can connect with other people and not have it be a codependent relationship. When you figure out where your place is on the board, you will begin to attract puzzle pieces that actually fit.

The Purpose Puzzle

Every human being that has ever lived has faced this struggle. There are so many books, blog posts, and philosophies about our existence. Psychologists even agree that having a fundamental purpose to living is crucial to our existence. It is believed that those who commit suicide reach a state of hopelessness that is so prevalent that they fail to see any real purpose to their lives.

If you look around our modern society, there are many games that we play that are wrapped in the purpose mask. Your job is probably the biggest one. Are you truly doing fulfilling work? Are you doing something that makes you feel good about who you are? Or are you a cog in the machine just trying to earn enough money to make ends meet?

The irony about that last question is that we see it in a negative light. We all know that guy who says our society is bullshit. (Any Mr. Robot fans out there?) I’m here to tell you that YOUR JOB IS NOT YOUR PURPOSE. I don’t care if your job is to feed sick, starving babies in whatever 3rd world country you can imagine. Your job might fulfill your purpose. And you might feel good about feeding those babies. Who could blame you? If you’re feeding sick babies, then you’re an awesome person.

However, your purpose is much more personal than that. You are never not living your purpose. Even when your life goes off the rails, you are just living your actual purpose in a way that you don’t enjoy. This was one of the most mind-blowing realizations that I ever had.

When I was a kid, I would constantly be out in the woods. I liked chopping down weeds and building paths. I loved exploring new areas of the woods. Taking them and taming them by building paths through them. When I grew up, I forgot all about that and became an engineer at a job that I found incredibly boring and unfulfilling. However, that job allowed me to think and discover new paths inside of myself. To dig up all the gunk that I was carrying since childhood. It then led me to teaching, which I enjoy a whole lot more and still allows me to do the same thing.

The purpose of my life is to make a path where there seems to be no path. Exploration is the word that I like to use. I am an explorer. As a kid, I explored the woods behind my house. As an adult, I explored myself. And now, it seems, I am exploring others and my connections to them.

The point is this: your purpose is already hidden in the years of living you’ve already completed. If you spend some time thinking about what purpose your life is already fulfilling for you, it will lead you to a purpose that inspires you and open up options for fulfilling that purpose in a way that you might enjoy more.

The Spiritual Puzzle

A better word for this might be the “existential” puzzle. It’s not just the why for your life, but the why for all of our lives. Its the one puzzle we will never solve because we don’t have access to the board. There are plenty of people who will try to tell you what the meaning is, but they are working with the exact same amount of information as you are. Remember that.

The important thing is to approach this puzzle in a way that makes sense to you (and you alone). It helps if you figure out the purpose puzzle (or at least have some idea of who you really are). But, at the end of the day, there is a part inside of you that needs this puzzle as well. It’s a desire for connection. It’s the part of you that projects your purpose into the community you live in. It’s the part of you that decides just what type of person you want to be to the outside world.

Making the Pieces Fit

If you are unhappy, I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about the puzzles that define your life. There was a time that I thought true happiness was a default feeling of joy. I had carried depression for so long, that I wondered what my life would be like if my default setting was happiness instead.

I don’t think about that much anymore because I know that life is a series of up-times and down-times. Things happen. Things change. And there is not a damn thing we can do to stop it. What really matters…what is most important…is our ability to shift the puzzle pieces to make them fit when it is necessary. Sometimes that means filling a huge gaping hole left by someone you loved very much. I didn’t say it would be easy, did I?

Just remember that you are on the board. The people you have known and loved have been on the board. And that you all work together to create this beautiful picture we call life. You may not fit together with the same people you used to fit with. Or perhaps you never fit with those people at all. That’s okay, because what really matters is how you fit today. Isn’t it time you figured out where?

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