connectivity

Remember those puzzles we used to play as little kiddies - the ones where you join up the dots according to their numbers to complete the picture?

I was crazy about those, second only to my beloved coloring books.

For ease of completion, and to cater to the short attention span of children, the dots are usually spaced rather apart, to keep the number small. Thus, if you just join the dots with straight lines, the end product, while definitely recognisable, would be a squarish image, a vague semblance of what it should look like.

I would obsess over the completed ones, erasing and 'curving' the lines where needed to achieve the perfect pic.

But then again, somehow this never occurred to me - the possibility of forming a different picture by connecting the dots in a different way. For all I know, those dots might form an even nicer pic than the one it originated from. After all, while it may seem that each dot has its designated 'connecting partner', who's to say that it can't connect as well with another dot? :p

Another puzzle I love is jigsaws - which is a totally different game altogether. Simply because to get all the pieces to form a picture, you need every single piece to match perfectly, to the piece it was meant for. Should you accidentally put two mismatched pieces that seem to fit, eventually this will show, cos at the intended position of the wrongly placed piece, things would go awry and you just have to re-match everything for things to fit.

Yet, it's precisely the tedious process of completing the final product, where all the pieces are where they should be, that results in the immense sense of satisfaction and contentment.

The question now is: in life, which is more applicable? Are relationships more akin to a join-the-dots puzzle, where possibilities abound, or are they more like jigsaw puzzles, where one has to be matched to THAT specific piece, to achieve happily ever after?

Bemused ponders..