The Jigsaw 

You start with a jumbled pile of pieces and an image of the ideal outcome. 

People offer contradictory advice: sort them by colour or shape or build landmarks first. Some sounds like meaningless work and some sounds useful. You decide to start anyway with your keen eye as a guide. 

You build a few towers. You find some pieces are edges and start to mark out the boundaries of your current endeavours. Some times you get the boundaries wrong but don’t find out until later. 

At first there are lots of landmarks and things come together easily. Pieces go in a rush. You experience the satisfaction as steps to the goal resolve out of mess. You smile as a piece slips in just perfectly. 

Some times the detail of a piece is unclear and you stare at it, rotating it looking for a clue as to where it fits in your ideal. Trial and error works some times. Then there is the piece that seems like it fits but won’t go. Other pieces have to be put aside for later. Once or twice you walk away from the board to do something else for a new perspective. 

You find other people can see things that you have missed and add pieces to the puzzles. Some hang around to help as capitivated as you are by the challenge. 

The greenery you thought was a challenge succumbs to careful attention. There were clues hidden in there to guide your work. 

Things start to get serious. You clean loose pieces off the board and sort them carefully.  You find the pieces you think you’ve lost. Some you had all along. Others slipped out of sight and required a search. One isn’t from this puzzle. At least one was hidden deliberately. 

Slowly your goal rises from the mess. Your goal gets richer and more complete piece by piece. The smallest details are the hardest to finish. Your head hurts and you wonder why you started, but the end is in sight. 

You can see almost the whole landscape. It’s been hours of painstaking collaborative work. Now you just have to tackle that expanse of blue sky.