Puzzles are fun. One puts together small, similar-seeming pieces. The difficulty arising from their similarity but distinct difference. Only the perfect match allowing a connection. And then, the sum of the pieces begetting something larger. Like the cheesy saying it physically encapsulates so much that defines our world.
Humans like multi-dimensional puzzle pieces stick together, create structures, locally and temporarily. Based on preferences. Economic needs. By attraction or external force. Serendipitously or through slow forging processes. Together those structures spin and fit themselves into the environment they inhabit. The grant meta puzzle we call our society.
But over time the puzzle pieces evolve. They change their shape. Some structures dissolve. new forms are being created. Looking from afar, one doesn’t see the puzzle pieces. Only the artwork that is created by its aggregates. Our human puzzle might look like a surface mixture of liquid colours. Flowing and recombining. Just to be separate on a river fork drifting into another direction. An ocean of colours with islands of short-lived stability, intertwined rivers of migrating particles of unimaginable diverse shades and shapes.
People peopelling. Changing, learning, growing, shape-shifting. Visually and conceptually. Ever evolving, caught in the state of forever becoming. While being part of a picture that in every moment is an artwork by itself.
The multi-dimensionality of people can’t be captured by a puzzle. The different edges we have to connect are countless. Where a puzzle piece has limited surface area, our lives with multidimensional personalities and cognitive conditions seem endless.
One needs something more detailed to describe its complexity. When I think about the very small, I imagine a universe in itself. In a way, our human puzzle is more similar to the puzzle of molecules.
Proteins are made of a chain of 100s to 1000s of amino acids. Depending on the sequence and kind of amino acids, the chain folds into a unique 3-dimensional structure. The structure defines its properties and capabilities. They combine to create cells, organs and organisms. Proteins can connect to others, interact, change shape and function, evolve and create the plethora of processes we call live. Their dance makes our cells multiply, our brains perceive and reason and our hearts pulsate. We are the puzzle of their creation.
Like the puzzle of life is made of amino acids, we people are similarly defined based on distinct properties. They make us attract or repel one another, make us evolve and be consumed.
Molecules creating organisms. Humans creating societies. What to make out of this cocktail of emergence?
As people are of ever-changing nature, a connection that once was might be dissolved in the next instance. Proteins that didn’t previously fit together, suddenly embrace each other in unforeseen ways.
With the chain of amino acids ever-changing, with the nature of people ever-evolving, new connections surface. Old ones dissolve. All while the puzzle is morphing from one masterpiece into another.
Once I am able to fully perceive this reality, it becomes evident to me that the meaning of any connection cannot be found in its future, but only in its present.
We can embrace it in its nowness. Forgoing any kind of clinging, foregoing worries about what’s becoming, to experience a brief state of arrival. For in the next moment to be washed away by the river tides. While the puzzle pieces that remain fit shall stay connected in the next instance of the masterpiece for just another little while.
