DEBORAH CORRAO / L’Observateur / November 27, 1999

The other day my granddaughter was fooling around with a little puzzle that came as a promotional item from a fast food restaurant. The puzzle was made ofsix squares that had to be inserted with a magnet into six squares on a frame to form a picture.

Carley fooled with it a while, attempting to assemble the puzzle vertically in two columns. Then my daughter and I tried it with no success until one of ussuddenly realized that the puzzle was supposed to be put together horizontally.

Et voile! That simple puzzle was a lot like many of life’s more difficult challenges.

Sometimes all it takes is a new way of looking at things to solve our problems.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut believing the way we’ve always done things is the only way to do them. Or we get stuck in our belief systems and refuse to look atsomeone else’s viewpoint.

I remember being at the mall a few years ago when those Magic Eye pictures were first starting to come out. One store owner had a couple of the picturesset up on easels in the mall and curious shoppers gathered around them trying to make the three-dimensional forms take shape. Most of them, including me, got alittle frustrated.

Then the store owner said, “You’ve got to look past the glare on the glass into the picture.” Within seconds I could see it! Yes, it was just like magic.Since then I’ve been able to see those pictures with a simple adjustment in my focus. But I know others who still cannot seem to get the hang of it.Throughout our lives we are faced with difficult decisions or obstacles in our pathway. Usually there is no “magic” solution to our problems, but if we canbegin to “look past the glare” we will begin to see the bigger picture.

As we move full swing into the busy holiday season, it is easy for us to become fatigued, stressed out or even depressed. We need to look past the glare of thetinsel and lights and shopping malls to the big picture – to the baby born in the manger and the light of just one star to show us the way.

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