Analogy

Isn't life like a puzzle which we put together one piece at a time! Generally, we start solving the puzzle from the border working inwards. Once the border is defined, we are left with filling in the rest of the picture.

Sometimes, we have all the pieces for the border, but it’s still hard to put them together without trying to mate each and every one of them, or just wait until we can get a better idea of the picture. Biggest difference between puzzle and life - we have a picture to begin with in the puzzle!

Initially our lives are defined by our parents. Then we slowly start building ourselves looking at our friends, teachers and classmates. But, until we leave home and start out on our own, we are just extensions of our parents and home environment.

When stepping out for the first time from the folds of our childhood, most of us try to stick to the ideals upheld and taught at home, until we realise that, everything can also be worked out differently and there is a lot of grey area in between the black and the white! Everything that we learn and absorb helps us define ourselves and brings out our individuality. Circumstances also play a part in this process. Aided by our foundation and our new thinking capacity, we start ‘forming’ ourselves for the best fit.

This is when cracks start forming in the ‘perfect’ relationship that we have with our parents, when we strain to step away from their mold. This looms large especially if this growing up process happens in a far-away land and when we go home after an extended time away!

But, for all this new-found freedom and development, a few years later, finds us going back to the same pattern or mold that was set by our background and parents, especially when it comes to all the major decisions in our lives!

So maybe, just maybe, life too has a picture for us to identify with, just like the puzzle!!