The house I now live in came with lots of stuff, much of which I don't need or want, so I had to begin a process of weeding out the excess baggage and trying to figure out a good destination for it. Among my newly-acquired possessions were more than a dozen puzzles, and while I enjoyed doing puzzles back in my school days, they had come to seem like a quaint relic from the pre-PC era. In planning to sell them, though, I ended up putting a few together, and enjoying the process once again. Along the way, they inspired a few basic thoughts about how they went together.
Which piece counts? They all do. What's the most important piece? At the moment you're working, it's the one you can't find, but for the whole picture, no one piece matters any more than the rest. Also, every piece has a slightly different shape, size and coloring. Some pieces may be very close in shape, size and coloring, but no two are the same -- every piece is different.
However, the pieces usually fall into basic shaping groups, some with 3 tabs and 1 slot, some with 1 tab and 3 slots, some with 2 each on opposing ends, and some with 2 each on adjacent ends. Then there's the edge pieces, which have 1 flat side and every possible combination of tabs and slots for the other 3 sides. Some puzzles expand the shape possibilities even further, but the point is that you can group puzzle pieces by these basic categories, and sometimes doing so will help you to find out where they belong, although usually you're better off grouping them by color values. However, some more modern puzzles actually move beyond the basic 4-sided piece concept altogether for some of their pieces, so many of those will defy any sort of categorization.
Sometimes you think you know exactly where a piece goes, and then you try it and it doesn't work. Sometimes you can put the wrong piece in place, and it seems to fit, both visually and in terms of shape, but it can still be the wrong piece. How do you know when you put a piece in the wrong place? You figure it out when the pieces around it don't fit into place. However, not fitting in doesn't make the piece bad -- it just means that the piece belongs somewhere else. Also, sometimes you can try a piece when you don't think it's the right one, and it will surprise you by fitting exactly into place.
As to the political implications of this puzzling metaphor, in a movement for social justice, some will find their place sooner than others, and some will seem to matter more than others, but in the bigger picture everyone matters, and everyone's contribution to the whole end result matters, whether large or small. Some may have similar skill sets and similar talents to offer, but still, everyone has a unique and important role to play, though some may need a take their time finding their place in the grand picture. Some may think they know where they belong, only to find that somehow things aren't working out, and they'll have to try something else. Some may think they won't fit in somewhere, only to surprise themselves by finding out that they actually fit very well. The best way to judge whether or not the pieces in a section fit together is to step back and look at the bigger picture.
A long time ago I heard of a movie that begins with a scene of someone cutting puzzle pieces to make them fit, and the understated humor of that scene fills in the remaining spaces of my puzzle metaphor. Unfortunately for honest people, in life cheaters often do prosper, contrary to a common childhood teaching, but once in a while a cheater cheats themselves in some spectacular way, because cheating is all they know, and the result provides some satisfaction to those of us with a deep longing for genuine justice. The person who cuts puzzle pieces to make them fit does not finish the puzzle sooner, but rather ends up with a picture that makes no sense, and one that inspires only laughter and scorn from those who look at it.
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