What Do You See? What Do You Imagine? (Part 1 of 3)

My family owned dozens of jigsaw puzzles over the years.  With six children to keep occupied, my parents would assist the younger kids, and offer the older children more challenging ways on how to assemble the puzzles.  Most of the time we would begin with the straight edges - to provide an initial dimension for the finished puzzle.  Sometimes my parents would suggest that we not look at the picture on the box and assemble like-colored sections first.  We would then connect the completed sections and add the straight edges at the end.  The most challenging proposal came from Dad:  to turn the puzzle pieces upside down (picture down), thus seeing only the cardboard backing.  Completing the puzzle this way required that we focus only on the shapes of the pieces; no other clues could help us.

I believe working together on a puzzle helped us develop analytical skills as well as support our emerging socialization skills:

• How to be patient... and get along.
• How to assign areas of the puzzle... and know each was trying their best.
• How to see a different perspective... and trust another person.

What do you see? 
 Sky?  Clouds?  Maybe treetops? 
(A portion of a Thomas Kinkade puzzle)

'Dad's Challenge,' though, seemed to test all of these budding skills: How do you delegate a portion of the puzzle when you can't see colors and patterns? How do you trust another person's work when both of you need a similar shaped piece?  How do you accept another perspective when only focused on facts determined by shape and not color?

Was Dad, so many years ago, foreseeing the complexity of this fast-paced, modern world by helping us observe and analyze in a different way: Tell me what you see.  What are you thinking and imagining?

Or, was this merely a cost-saving method of keeping us occupied?  Completing a familiar puzzle by changing the way to assemble it with a fresh beginning and outlook.  It beat buying more puzzles to keep us occupied!

What picture is emerging or can be imagined?
Sky? Clouds? Treetops? Houses?
(A portion of a Thomas Kinkade puzzle)

Dialogue, in a similar fashion, invites us to describe what we see (facts and observations) and test what we imagine might be the outcome (assumptions and meaning).  I believe a learned skill in Dialogue is to see what is behind the completed or imagined scene - to ask questions:

• What do I see?  The facts or observations as I understand them.
• What do I imagine?  The assumptions and meanings I create.
• What do I not see or imagine?  The questions that can check out the facts, observations, assumptions, and meanings assigned.

What did I not see or imagine earlier?
A bridge?  A stream?  A path?  Grass?  Flowers? 
(A portion of a Thomas Kinkade puzzle)

Jigsaw puzzles have always fascinated me!  Putting together one piece at a time, a new picture continuously emerges.  And just think: one idea or thought shared may change the perspective of how we all see the world!

Questions to consider this week:

• What facts or observations have you assembled about a loved one, friend, or colleague?
• What assumptions have you created or meanings assigned to their intentions?
• Can you accept that the full picture is incomplete... of who they are becoming?

May individual pieces of your Life Puzzle begin to come together this week as you imagine new possibilities!

Larry Gardepie
Dialogue San Diego Consulting