A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a puzzle piece lying in the street.

My first reaction was a moment of lizard-brain panic. I was working on a jigsaw at home and was having trouble finding a missing piece. Had this piece somehow gotten caught in a fold of my clothing and fallen to the street? Had I noticed it fall, the falling motion catching my eye?

In that same split second, the reasoning part of my brain reassured me: this piece was clearly old and had been outdoors for days, the pattern washed away, the edges worn. And it was the wrong color, the wrong shape, to fit in my puzzle.

And I walked on.

Walking to work takes on a pattern of repetition. Over the next week, as I walked to work, I found myself passing that corner again and again and seeing that piece every day. Sometimes on the way to work, somehow on the way home. Even after street-cleanings and rain storms, it remained.

Was it trying to tell me something?

And then I began to see other pieces in the streets. On different corners. Sometimes individually. Sometimes two or three together.

Was the voice growing louder?

What could it be trying to tell me? That I needed to put the pieces of my life together? That I had all the pieces, I just needed to stop looking for a picture to tell me what they should look like, trust myself, and assemble? Or that something was indeed missing, lying forgotten somewhere, passed by every day, noticed and quickly disregarded.

Sometimes the universe speaks to us. It whispers, Hey. Hey, you.

Hey, pay attention. Something important is happening here.

Wake up!

Until it drops a ton of rocks on your head.

I’ve been watching The 100 Foot Wave on HBO, about big wave surfers, and particularly about Garret McNamara, the first person to have ridden a wave reputed to be 100 feet tall – a claim that he, in the documentary, disclaims. The wave, he says, is still out there. He still wants to ride it.

He’s on a quest to ride it.

A few years ago, he fell in this pursuit and injured his shoulder so badly that, even after recovering physically, his mind wouldn’t let him surf. So, he went to a yoga retreat in Bali with some other battered surfers. Afterwards he felt better, so he surfed a famous wave near the yoga center. He felt so good that he didn’t bother wearing his helmet. On his first wave, he wiped out, smashed his head on a reef, and gave himself a concussion. The doctor – in board shorts and bare chest – told him no surfing for two weeks.

So he went surfing again right away and, this time, broke his foot in multiple places. Recovering from surgery in Portugal, he couldn’t sit still and went to Africa and participated in a beach clean-up. Then to a surfing camp for underprivileged youth in South Africa. Then to New York to work on a surfing suit designed to cushion the fall of big wave surfers. As any New Yorker can tell you, New York is death to injured feet and ankles.

He reinjured his foot.

Sometimes the universe whispers to us and, when we don’t listen, the volume grows like my sister telling her son to put his Lego away and go to bed. Bed. Bed! BED! GOTOBED DON’TMAKE METELL YOU ONE MORE TIME! BED! NOW!

In my last year at the company where I had grown up, the universe kept sending me signals. After my dream vacation to celebrate a milestone anniversary, it whispered low, time to go. When my boss left, a man who had championed me and given me so many opportunities to do what I did best, it turned up the volume: Time. To. Go.

When I didn’t listen, it dropped a ceiling on me. Literally, a building maintenance worker fell off a ladder while pulling cable down a chase that ran through a corner of my office. Fell through the subceiling, taking it out, smashing gifts that my employees had given me through the years, scattering a dish of brightly-colored marbles that I kept on my desk, and leaving a cloud of pulverized concrete and ceiling tile. It hung like a mist in my office, settling each night to re-coat desk, table, chairs, bookshelves, computer, white board, and standing files. For months, when I opened files, I had to shake dust (and probably asbestos) from the work inside.

I knew the universe was speaking to me but I didn’t listen. So it turned up the volume from there until I couldn’t NOT hear it. And then I left.

The puzzle pieces on the street are nagging at me.

Do I need to do more puzzles? Do I need to reconnect with Ellen Heaney-Mizer, the queen of jigsaws? I often use jigsaws as a metaphor for what I do in my career, the kinds of puzzles that I love to solve for companies. I also reengaged with jigsaws during the pandemic, as a hobby that kept me occupied while trapped at home – a hobby that is now towering over my home office, threatening to fall on me as I sit here writing. Does it have something to do with that?

What are they trying to tell me? I need to find out.

Especially because the other day I turned the corner and found an entire puzzle’s worth of pieces dumped on the sidewalk.

The universe is speaking. And the volume is up.