Fitting the pieces together is a lot different than picking up the pieces. At least I hope so.
I’m only four days into this blogging about being sixty and reinventions. So, I’m still trying to fit it all together.
Work with me.
Way back in college when I edited the yearbook we used images from a jigsaw puzzle and I wrote something poignant like “memories of the past fill our minds like the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”
I’m cringing as I type that.
That’s not an exact quote since I currently don’t know which storage box contains the yearbooks, and I’m not interested in searching for them for the sake of this post.
Not that I wouldn’t, of course, do anything for you, Dear Reader.
It’s just that some anythings are more equal than others.
The whole thought behind the yearbook theme was that there were, and are, many things that will make up the complete picture of our lives. It’s deeper than that, and it could be worded much more eloquently. Maybe someday it will.
Today is not that day.
I’m pretty sure that idea was the basis for the one “sermon” I was able to give in chapel when I was Alumni Board President. That’s another story…and one I think I need to re-write.
Squirrel.
Back to the puzzle at hand.
On another occasion, we were on a retreat with our small group from our church in Washington, DC. We had rented a cabin in the mountains. I’m pretty sure it was winter and weathery.
Over the course of the weekend, we put together a “Where’s Waldo” jigsaw puzzle. We finished before dinner and I attempted to move the card table containing the puzzle. Needless to say the legs were not secure and parts of the puzzle ended up on the floor.
While there were no king’s horses or king’s men, we were able to put it back together.
Except for one piece. We searched and searched. We moved furniture and rugs. In the end, the friends who owned the puzzle and who wanted to frame it, enlarged the photo on the box and recreated the missing piece.
I wasn’t allowed to help with puzzles after that.
Where am I going with the post? If I only knew.
No wait…it’s putting things together.
Here I am, working through the retirement plan. Figuring out what it means to be sixty and on the waning end of my professional career, or at least the current professional career.
I’m trying to figure out what retirement is going to look like. What are the pieces that I have to put together to make this all work out?
I know what some of them are. I know what most of them are.
Still, I’m not yet sure that I have the complete picture.
I’ll get there. I’ll keep searching for the right pieces.
Oh say…while you’re here…can you help me move the couch?
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