Many years ago, I compared life to a jigsaw puzzle.
When you're looking at a single piece, you can't always tell where it belongs. A dark piece might look entirely out of place until more of the picture begins to appear.
I was thinking about the events in life that, at the time, seem to make very little sense.
A job comes to an end. A relationship changes. Something we had carefully planned takes an unexpected direction.
In the middle of it, we may see only what has been lost, or what we fear might happen next.
Years later, we might look back and understand that period differently. We may recognise decisions, encounters or changes that weren't visible to us at the time.
But not every difficult experience becomes a blessing. Some things remain painful. Some losses cannot be made right by what happens afterwards.
Perhaps the value of the jigsaw metaphor isn't that every piece was placed there for a reason.
It's that we rarely see the whole picture while we're still living through one small part of it.
And sometimes, with time, our understanding changes — even when the past itself cannot.