{"id":3091,"date":"2014-12-28T14:07:48","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T14:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/?p=3091"},"modified":"2014-12-28T14:07:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-28T14:07:48","slug":"people-arent-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/people-arent-pictures\/","title":{"rendered":"People Aren’t Pictures."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"6494222757_39c00fce66_z\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

My four-year-old daughter just schooled me on a puzzle.<\/h3>\n

To be honest, I\u2019m not spatially oriented at all and hate puzzles.<\/p>\n

That said, she gave me a funny look as she corrected me; putting the odd wooden shape where it really goes.<\/p>\n

And people are not pictures.<\/em><\/p>\n

I observe so many people wanting to cram others\u2019 eccentricities and personalities into even smaller packages than a carefully wrapped Christmas gift.<\/p>\n

We want so badly for people to fit a certain mold or image that we forget who they really are and what they\u2019re really capable of.<\/p>\n

We want so much for a parent, or a child, or a sibling or a friend to fit into the same-sized shape we\u2019ve already seen made\u2014in our imaginations or at another person\u2019s house down the street or on t.v.\u2014that we don\u2019t see who\u2019s right in front of us and in our lives.<\/a><\/p>\n

In so many ways my daughter reminds me of my husband.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a constant reminder for me that people are not \u201cman\u201d or \u201cwoman,\u201d but individuals who think and move and just are a certain way\u2014their<\/em> own way.<\/p>\n

She handed me this tiny wooden shape\u2014the same one I had just set down in the right corner of her brand-new puzzle\u2014and cocked me a look that wordlessly said, \u201cMom, you seriously have no idea where the hell this goes?\u201d\u2014as I slid the piece back \u201cinto place,\u201d where I had already put it, where it belonged, where my brain had wanted it to go.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t go there.<\/em><\/p>\n

She was right, and I realized this a few beats later as I told her what a good job she had done to know that this puzzle piece went \u201cover there,\u201d in the left-hand corner.<\/p>\n

More, she reminded me that I\u2019m not always (or even usually) \u201cright\u201d while other people (especially those I love) are \u201cwrong,\u201d simply because we view the world differently; because our pictures are composed of differing landscapes.<\/p>\n

We are not pictures of what other people want us to look like.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of us marry, and some don’t.<\/p>\n

Some of us have and want kids, and others not so much.<\/p>\n

Some of us are religious and others shun religion.<\/p>\n

Yet this idea of \u201cthe other\u201d is left behind completely when we choose to witness and then accept who is right before us, whether I\u2019m choosing to accept and love myself or my child (or my sister or my friend).<\/p>\n

We are all truly unique and not meant to be cut down to fit a certain size and shape, because that\u2019s what trying to cram a person into a prefabricated mold does\u2014it cuts them down.<\/p>\n

We cannot recognize and honor who an individual is<\/em> if we don\u2019t see him or her for who they already are.<\/a><\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t want to be a vision, but an artist\u2014I want to create my own canvas with my own wild selection of paints.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be a director, but a performer and a willing participant of the audience.<\/p>\n

I want to look upon people with gratitude while they look upon me, thinking, \u201cthat\u2019s not what I expected, but she\u2019s beautiful nonetheless.\u201d<\/p>\n

And I want to admire the people who make up the pieces of my life so that, much like my daughter\u2019s puzzle, the picture winds up beautiful and absolutely incapable of being whole without the rest of its seemingly mismatched parts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Flickr\/Bodenpuzzleln<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was first published by elephant journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My four-year-old daughter just schooled me on a puzzle. To be honest, I\u2019m not spatially oriented at all and hate puzzles. That said, she gave me a funny look as she corrected me; putting...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[97,76,49],"class_list":["post-3091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to-love-be-loved","tag-friendships","tag-love","tag-relationships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/6494222757_39c00fce66_z.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4dYEp-NR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3091"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3097,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions\/3097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferswhite.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}