The Puzzle

Once a great artist created a true work of beauty. He was ever so proud of his beautiful creation – the way the colors blended together, the way the images offered such perspective. One day this image was torn, through no fault of the artist. When he looked at how the image was torn, he thought to simply destroy the image and create a whole new one. Yet upon further reflection, he realized in a strange mysterious way, the torn piece could be put back together re-representing the original beauty. In fact, the tear even seemed to add character, so the artist proceeded to cut the original work into hundreds of different pieces of all shapes and sizes. He drew a simple image of the orignial so that someone else might be able to put all the pieces together – reassembling the original work of beauty. As he gazed upon the many different pieces, each one alone was a beautiful thing. Some of the pieces had a straight side, while others had many different contours and edges. Some were covered with the vibrant colors of the original image, others were covered with the dark shadows. Alone they were beautiful, but the image would never be complete until someone put all the pieces together again. So he placed the pieces all together in a box, and placed the copy of the original on top of the box, hoping that one day someone might recreate the original beauty.

Inside the box, the pieces became aware of themselves. Some began to notice that they had a nice, clean straight edge, while the others were just sloppy shapes. Those with the straight sides began to gather together, recognizing their own superiority to the other pieces. “This image would never be contained were it not for me!” proudly proclaimed one piece. Not to be outdone, a piece that consisted of curves and dips pronounced, “Yet without me, this image would have no heart!” Piece after piece exclaimed its own importance to the overall work of beauty, and day after day it became more and more obvious that the original work would never be recreated.

One day the artist’s son found the box. Seeing the beautiful image on the top of the box, the son opened it up – only to find all of the hundreds of pieces scattered about within the box. The son could see the work of beauty that his father intended, and so he set out to bring these broken, torn pieces back together. As he poured out the pieces upon the floor, he began sorting them so that he might begin to assemble the original creation. He first began to grab the pieces with the straight edges so that he might create the border. The straight edge pieces took such pride that they were chosen first. They linked together as he placed them, and they held together tightly, thinking to themselves, “I knew he would not want those sloppy pieces! He’s liked us best all along!” When the son had finished the border, he looked down at what he had put together. What he saw was the shape of what was originally intended: it held the basic form of the original, and the edges maintained the order of the original, but the beauty of the original was not found only in the border. Much to the horror of the straight edge pieces, the son began to take the “sloppy” pieces and he placed them with great care according to what he knew the original image was to look like. As the picture began to be recreated, each piece was able to maintain its own personal shape and size, but amazingly it became a part of something much more beautiful. The pieces with all of the curves and contours began to realize that while they held such beauty independently, together they formed the heart of the image. The straight edge pieces began to realize that while they maintained order and structure independently, together they completed something much, much greater. As the son placed the last piece, he realized that he had, in fact, recreated the very work of art that his father had first made.