Fruition

This morning offers my normal routine after a weekend near the North Carolina Pisgah National Forest.  My family inhabited a place with no TV, shunned the iPhone, email, internet and iPad.  We had food, family, sweet mountain air, babbling water sounds.  I am preoccupied with a focus on fruition I found in myself.

Fruition is defined at dictionary.com.

1.  attainment of anything desired; realization; accomplishment
2.  enjoyment, as of something attained or realized
3.  state of bearing fruit

One of my “mountain time” fantasies before the trip involved a big table and my new 550 piece puzzle depicting a black bear cub.  What could be better for woodland relaxing? 

The first day I executed phase one of puzzle making - clear table, spread felt puzzle mat, sort edge pieces, assemble flat sided pieces to create the perimeter of my bear cub scene.  The tasks were pleasant and imbued with progress.  I began phase two - sort remaining pieces. 

I collected and categorized blue bits - sky.  Green pieces - trees.  Black bits - bear.  Numerous speckled gray pieces - tree trunk.  My thoughts seeped between the cracks of the broken image taking shape as colored cardboard piles formed to the right of my perfectly produced puzzle perimeter.  This is going to take forever.  I’ll never get this done.  How can I arrange these pieces in the most efficient way?

My thoughts horrified me.  I was fixated on the end, on bringing the puzzle to fruition!  I had to consciously talk to my brain like it was another person.  This is fun.  It doesn’t matter if you finish the puzzle; it is the DOING of the puzzle that is the point. 

Slowly, I began to have internal quiet as classified bits offered surprised glee when I found a piece that fit in place.  Although I was aware of my thoughts and could banish them they still felt like my natural instinct, something I had to override to enjoy the time of assembling the puzzle.  A memory surfaced.  In my early twenties I observed a group of Tibetan monks creating a sand mandala, a beautiful geometric design on the ground.  It was a colorful thing of great beauty painstakingly created with grains of colored sand!  It would be ritually swept away after completion.  I tried to bring some of their stillness, their meditation to my time with the puzzle.         

I did not finish the puzzle.  The sorted rows of green, black, and mottled grey remain guarding the periphery of the puzzle rolled in a yellow felt pad, strapped tight for travel.  I was able to enjoy the minutes here and there I grabbed from the days to sit with the puzzle even without thinking of its culmination.  My son shared some puzzle time with me, too.  I’ll save the puzzle for the next trip.  I will finish it and admire it for a day or two.  Eventually I know I will break it apart and put it back in the box.