Wanzology

A Puzzle Is Only As Good As Its Pieces

  Howdy doody, howdy doody. Welcome to another Wednesday. Yep. Yep. Yep. We're on a Wednesday tip now and it is another episode of WANZOLOGY! Yesirree Bob. Here I am. I am here, your host, The Wanz and I am still reading from #THEBOOKOFWANZ, which is still available at Amazon.com.

Very close to getting the website for WANZOLOGY all completed, just going through testing phases right now. So blogging will happen soon, hopefully. So, today, the chapter is a very interesting one. Like most, I'm gonna read it and see what you think. The title of the chapter is, A PUZZLE IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE PIECES THAT MAKE IT.

As a kid, I used to put puzzles together. Like most kids, I guess. I started with ones that had really big pieces and worked my way to the ones that had a lot of small pieces. I've grown to believe life is a big puzzle with big and small pieces. I gather information, look at the shape, the size of things, and make a decision whether a particular piece fits in a particular place or not.

I believe this is one of the great similarities among humans. Everyone has their own puzzle and is trying to place pieces where they fit. As complex as your life may seem, believe me, someone else thinks theirs is more complex. As simple as you think your life is, there's gonna be someone who thinks theirs is much easier than yours.

Consider the quality of each piece and not the quantity. Consider each piece as a batch of cookies or cupcakes. You have to assemble the right ingredients in the right amount and in the right order to make good cookies or cupcakes. I have found that when I take the time to make the best piece of life I can, that part of my puzzle turns out great.

So how many facets do you have in your life? Facets, you know, those are like the little slanted cuts that are on precious gemstones and whatnot. How many facets do you have in your life? Think about it. You are your own individual person and you do exactly whatever it is that you do exactly the way that you want to do it. Which would be normally not a really big thing, except, you gotta do it around other people. At some point, you gotta do it around other people. Now the crazy part is those other people are doing the exact same thing. They too are trying very hard to figure out what pieces go where, how to put what piece where. If it doesn't fit, what's next? Or just not throw up their hands and be frustrated by the whole bloody thing.

Now you ain't special. I hate to break it to you. You're just not. But then again, neither am I, neither is anybody. There aren't really very many special people quote unquote left in this world. The ones that are special usually are moms, dads, uncles, aunts, brothers maybe, sisters definitely. That's about it. Notice it's within one family, right? Usually, the special people are within one family. If you are not in somebody's family, sorry, you ain't special. Unless you're special to yourself. Well, now, now, now, we're getting somewhere.

Where are we going with this? You don't have to tell anybody that you're special to you. You don't have to tell anyone you are your own MVP. All you have to do is ‘act as if’, I said that in the previous podcast, fake it till you make it, it's not always going to go your way. And you know that even if it's not going your way, wouldn't it be great for it not to be going your way and you totally expected that so it's not bumming you out. It's not dragging you down. It's not making you think some sort of way. That causes you to think less of yourself. Life is a continually shifting and moving puzzle, and we, with whatever our aspirations are, whatever our talents are, whatever our character defects are, whatever our disabilities are, we're just trying to put our own pieces together so that it makes sense. Not so much for everybody else, but for us. Because, I mean, there's nothing worse than trying to fit a puzzle piece where it's NOT supposed to go. That's kind of cheating. That's like putting together an Ikea table and having, like, three screws left instead of just one, and you can't remember where two of the three go. If you don't know what that means, just buy something that you have to assemble from Ikea. The directions are always a challenge. Sort of like a puzzle.

So, what are you gonna do now? What are you gonna do with this information? How can you identify what pieces are next to fit into your life? If, you know, you're a very large majority of people, you wake up each day and you get yourself gussied up and get ready and you travel somewhere to go work for someone doing some-thing that you may not always like to do. You may not always dig doing it, but you know, it pays the bills and it could be worse. My pops used to say, “you know, it beats digging a ditch in the rain.” I don't know about you, but I've never had to do that. Doesn't sound very. fun or appealing, educational or stimulating in any way, shape or form. It just sounds like a drag digging a ditch in the rain. Sorry, I'll pass. But you of course are different. You of course are ‘special’. So that's not something that you really have to worry about now is it? All you have to worry about is getting through your day, doing the job that you do, so that you can travel back to your abode or maybe go hang out with friends and then travel back to your abode where you take stock of your day or relax and watch whatever is trending on Netflix or Hulu or whatever. If you're lucky enough to have a significant other, maybe you're spending time with that person. Maybe you're going to a movie. Maybe you're just hanging out talking about underwater basket weaving because you both have that in common, who knows? But when you go from the start of your day to the end of your day, there are all these little things that happen, not the big ones. Look for the little ones because in those little ones, that's where you're putting the puzzle together. You're putting the pieces together to make bigger parts of a puzzle that will fit with other big parts of the puzzle.

Now, you don't have to do it that way. You can take one piece and try to fit one piece and go through all.
999 of a thousand-piece puzzle to find that one piece and then just count down from there to find one piece that goes with another. That's one way of doing it. There is no right way of doing it. Everybody gets to do it different. But here's the thing, if the pieces of your puzzles suck, odds are your puzzle is doomed to suck as well. A puzzle is only as good as its pieces. You ever bought a puzzle from like Goodwill and struggled to get it together. And when you finally get it together, It's got a bunch of pieces missing, no pieces left to put in it. Yet there are pieces missing from this thousand-piece puzzle. How's that feel? Not as satisfying I bet, not as satisfying as if all the other pieces were there, even though you completed it, it's not complete. Now take that little mental picture and put it on any day that you can remember. You start the day, there's all these pieces. And at the end of the day, there's a complete puzzle, but there are pieces missing and there's no more pieces to place. Sound familiar? Yeah, me too. There's always a day that you could have done something else. You could have been better at something, better to someone. There's always something. Human nature is a pretty predictable thing and the one thing that you can always count on with human nature. It's never satisfied. It can be content for a while, but that's temporary. Pretty much like everything else. It's temporary.

So, what do you think? Is this working for you? Does this make sense? I mean, it makes sense to me, sit and watch or don't sit, stand and watch the checkout line at a grocery store next time you get a chance. You don't have to stay long, maybe two people and watch those two people go through the checkout line and the interaction is between the checker that person and maybe one other person. Whoever's bagging or, or next in line, right? Now there's a difference between those people who just keep their head down and just, you know, let the checker do their thing and let the bagger do their thing and then they pay and they leave. Difference between them and the other person who's “hi, how you doin?”, and being all engaging and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who do you think has the better puzzle? Who do you think has a better section of a puzzle? Hmm. I think it would be a little more enjoyable. If you were engaged with someone, even if it's about silly things like the weather or kids or the price of tea in China, or who knows.
Everybody knows that the more you look at a clock, the longer time takes and being engaged with another person takes your attention off the clock, thereby you ignore time is passing. And little do you know that time is passing right before your very eyes, but it doesn't seem like it's taken as long, does it? No, it does not.

That's the beautiful thing. When you have many pieces of a puzzle, and you're going from one to the next, and you're putting these things together, and doing this and that, and going there and hither and yawn, the day just goes faster. Doesn't seem like it's a day at all. Seems like you just woke up, you just had lunch, you just got home. Different pieces for different people. But what happens when you do the crazy thing and start exchanging pieces with other people? How much does that change what your puzzle is going to look like, hmm?

Humans are supposed to be social creatures. We're supposed to interact. We're supposed to be around each other, tribes, groups, whatever you want to call it, right? And one thing that everybody has in common is they're trying to reach whatever their objectives are during the course of any given day, right? Well, if you look at a day like a puzzle, there are big parts, there are medium parts, there are small parts, and you're putting them all together and at the end of the day, you're as done as you're gonna be. Because the next day, you start all over again. It's not like you continue. You think you do. “Oh, what I didn't do today, I can do again tomorrow.” Well, no, tomorrow's a new day and that thing you didn't do the day before? Well, it's just another thing, but it's not really connected to yesterday. Because it's on today's docket. Now, call me crazy, call me weird, but That's just kind of the way that I think of things. You can have a project that takes four days, but what it really is, is four days you have a project and at the end, all those pieces make a bigger puzzle. But what you worked on yesterday is not what you got to work on today. And what you get done today will be not what you work on tomorrow. The quality of your day today, namely the quality of those pieces. Directly affect what's coming later on that day or the next sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

I know, but see, I think about these things. I think about these things, so you don't have to,

I believe that we are always evolving, always changing, always trying new and different things. To make the puzzle of our life a little better, just a little better than it was before. I mean, you can be having your best life right now, do you think you could be a little better? I bet you do. I bet that even though you've had a great day, a great evening, a great morning, there is something that would have made any of those better. Human nature never satisfied. Human nature is always looking for the most that it can get out of whatever is in front of it.

But if you remember that a puzzle is only as good as the pieces that make it. Maybe you, uh, should focus on what the pieces of whatever your puzzle is are. What are those pieces? Because if you can make each piece better, doesn’t it make sense that the whole puzzle in and of itself will be good, at least, and better, better than it was before. Mind your pieces, people. Mind your pieces. And Lord knows, if you see somebody who's not minding their pieces very well, maybe you should tell them because they may not understand. They may not know how. You may know how to do it better than they do. They might could use your help. Be polite, be tactful, be informative and educational. Not condescending. See where it gets you. Another piece of your own puzzle.

How ‘bout them apples? Yep. Cool. I seem to say that a lot at the end of an episode. Cool, but I think it's kind of cool when you can start out at the beginning of something and get to the end of something, going all the way through the middle of something, that something becomes a thing and ‘things’ are kind of cool especially in your life or their rad or their boss or ‘bitchin’!! Whatever your onomatopoeia wants to put on it okay? It's your life. And I hope the pieces of your life get better rather than missing.

Take care of yourselves. I'll see you next Wednesday.

The Wanz is Ow-ooooooooooot!!!!