Piece of the Puzzle December 10, 2008

There’s something really soothing about jigsaw puzzles.

When I was little, I had this puzzle of two puppies sitting in a mailbox that I would put together over and over again. I found it a couple of days ago when my family and I were digging through boxes and putting up our Christmas decorations. I’ve always tended to be the slow-mover in my family, I often take a lot of pitstops along the way (for things I deem more important). I can’t help it that those times happen to be when heavy lifting of a Christmas tree from the attic is the course I veer from.

Anyway, I decided to take a break and put together that puzzle. I started thinking about why anyone does this. It’s really simple, but fantastic.

I like to think about life as if it were a great puzzle. I am a puzzle, the world is a puzzle, the universe is a puzzle. The whole point of this journey is to keep finding the pieces and putting them in their place. Believe me, all pieces have their place. Especially those total pain, jig-jagged edged, one color pieces that go somewhere in the endless middle. What is interesting is the different ways we approach solving puzzles. When I was little, I took to that puppy dog puzzle as if it were something I had to put together. The pieces would make it whole, and I was in charge of bringing them together. I notice in my own thoughts, as I start to grow older, that I see many challenging situations as something massive that I have to take apart.

I think that is what a lot of us do when we grow older. No longer are we at ease with incompleteness. We see it as a negative and something we must break down even further to try to understand so that we can build it up again. I guess to put it simply, as children we spend our times building the puzzles and as we grow older we change direction and spend time breaking them down.

It’s not always true, but I do think it tends to happen (and in a lot of important situations – love, career, planning for the future). We make things more complicated than they are.

I will mention that age takes an obvious affect on some people. My older sister completely destroyed my puzzle once I had finished. Maybe we haven’t grown up at all.

Playground Romance December 4, 2008

I can think of three specific romances that blossomed on the playground. The second and third grades were my luckiest years for love, and I managed to squeeze it all into the 20 minutes allotted for recess. How magical.

It is interesting to think about, how we were so young and trying to be so grownup by falling in love. What is this inherent need that we have? We could enter a huge discussion about the nature of love and all its intricacies, but then again, maybe it is as simple as a recess. It is something that takes us from the ordinary, a recess from other comparatively ho-hum moments.

As a girl of 21, I am keenly aware of the searching and hoping for love that people my age (and all ages, really) engage in. It is interesting because at my time, love seems so complicated to me and to my friends. Romances have come and gone, been good and flubbed, and then just plainly disappeared. It becomes this thing we have to analyze because we just cannot understand. But maybe if we remember how simple it is, think back to how easily our playground romances flowed, we could be better equipped to see love as it hits us square between the eyes (whenever that may be) and to wait patiently until then.

I stumbled upon this feature from NBC’s Today Show where a young boy publicize’s the book he wrote to help boys of all ages to do the right things in order to get the right girls. Besides being exceptionally well-spoken for a boy of 9, his advice is exceptionally insightful yet simple.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/28050331#28050331

Hi, what’s your name? November 9, 2008

When I was little, my brother was always playing baseball. I would have to tag along since I was so young, and while my parents would watch the nine innings, I would find a playground or a sandbox, or anything at the park to keep me occupied when I couldn’t convince my mom to buy me some nachos at the snack bar.

Luckily, I was usually not alone in this. I could always count on there being at least one other younger sibling who had no interest in watching a baseball game. The thing I remember most about those nights spent at a baseball complex was how easy it was to make friends. I was very shy, but I had no problem walking up to almost anyone and asking if they wanted to play on the jungle gym.

I did, of course, have a very strict screening process before becoming friends on the playground. It went something like this. “Hi, what’s your name?” They respond. “Cool. How old are you?” We exchange numbers (age that is) and are ready to play. That is all there was to it.

I have often thought about this, sometimes longing for the simplicity of connecting with another person without any preconceived notions or judgments about who we are or where we came from. It is something I want to bring back to the forefront of my life. It is not always kosher to be so upfront with people you have just met, and that is a norm I do not understand but have and probably will continue to abide by. Hopefully we can all break down those walls.

My favorite musician, Natasha Bedingfield, has a song on her second CD entitled “Backyard” and it explains so well the thoughts I have put forth here. I was looking for a way to add it to the blog and found this clip from a live show where she explains thoughts similar to mine…how easy it was as kids and how we can carry that with us into our adult lives to make the world a better place. The quality is a little shaky, but I thought it best to hear her explanation to her own song from her. Take a look.