
How does it all come together?
You wonder.
When it’s all said and done and the light in the living room light of your life is turned off, how does the puzzle on the floor you’ve been toiling at look?
Is it a complete work? A picture ? A moving hologram?
Are the edges smooth and crisp with lines perpendicular to one another?
Or are they jagged and piecemeal – curvy gaps left open, craving for closure?
Ah – and the ultimate question, are the lines supposed to connect, revealing a picture complete in its finality?
Or are there supposed to be jagged edges?
Is the puzzle supposed to remain unfinished, ever looking for that final piece?
And as we stand up to gain the higher view, the outside upward perspective of the picture that is our life – what is it that we see?
More work to be done.
More pieces to collect.
More angling and fishing and finishing and solving.
Or are we satisfied in our achievement?
Is whatever it is- enough ?
Can we see the beauty we created ?
Can we appreciate the complexity of the effort, the momentum of the task, the joy in its completion?
Not me.
Not matter how hard I try.
No matter how often I coach myself.
I will already be looking for that piece I lost somewhere under the couch.
I can’t even tell what the shape is supposed to be or where in the picture it is filling the void.
Like a shadow, it’s just there, behind me, over my shoulder, out of my reach.
The lost puzzle piece that is you.
That is what was.
What’s supposed to have been.
What will never be.
Always close but elusive nonetheless.
And somehow, someway, at some point before the end table lamp of my life extinguishes the light for the long night ahead – I will hold that piece in my hand and I will know.
I will know if it was meant to be lost all along.
Or if it truly belongs, in my puzzle.
And then, there will finally be peace.