Connecting the Dots
Did you love connect the dots puzzles when you were a kid? You know … well maybe if you’re young and you’ve got a PS2, you don’t … you draw a line in order between the numbered dots and a picture emerges. Sure, if you were a smart little boy like I was, you could usually see what the picture was from the pattern of the dots on the page before you even started but it was fun anyway. My home town newspaper, New Haven Register, used to include one puzzle in the comics section on Sundays and it was my job to do it. I haven’t seen a dot-to-dot puzzle (as they’re also known) in a long time, so I Googled connect the dots to see what I’d find. Amazingly, they are not extinct … there are many sites where you can download and print puzzles or even sites where you can do them on line. I think next time we go to Arizona, I’ll have to show my grandson – they will definitely be his kind of thing. By the way, if you decide to do some hunting online for these puzzles, be sure your anti-malware software is in the protect mode. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware prevented me from going to several sites that were potentially dangerous. Doesn’t it just suck that people use sites intended for children to do their mischief? The internet brings many benefits but at least as many problems, I’d say … I never got a malware infection from the New Haven Register.
It’s no accident that connect the dots has also come to be used as a metaphor to illustrate a person’s ability (or inability) to associate one idea with another (Wikipedia). Life is a lot like a connect the dots puzzle … thousands of events take place every year, and we try to see the big picture. Except, as the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, has said, Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards – we only get to see the dots in the past. But here’s the biggest difference: when you’re doing a connect the dots puzzle instead of a connect the dots of life, you can’t put down your own dots (well I guess you can, but it messes up the intended picture … HMMM!). In business, placing your own next dot before life does is known as being proactive or controlling your own destiny. When I was younger, I was determined to place all of my own dots, leave nothing to chance. I can look back and say I did a pretty good job … for the most part, I like the picture. But these Older Eyes also notice that sometimes that the dots that were provided by life … or God, if you’re so inclined … influenced the picture that emerged more than I’d have admitted in my Arrogant Forties. And I also notice that while the picture in my childhood my connect the dots never changed mid-puzzle, occasionally life throws down a next dot that changes everything. Knowing that … and being determined to keep the picture the same or desperate for change … I’ve been known to frantically throw dots onto the page to force the issue. Other times, I sat pencil in hand, afraid to see where the next dot would fall if I didn’t place it myself but paralyzed by confusion. I hate those times … and I’ve been there a lot so far this year. A friend of mine says Confusion is a gift from God … it keeps me from acting before I know God’s will for me. I’m not sure I believe that God’s will extends all the way down to the minuscule decisions of this life of mine but at sixty-five I’m willing to consider the possibility … and be patient while I wait for that next dot or some notion as to where to place it.
Tags: feeling older, grandchildren, perspectives, play, sage
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October 12, 2010 at 5:24 am
hello: i remember- i just wrote a storyabout unjoined dots…i liek your blog!