Day 272: Missing Pieces

In a life filled with thousand-piece puzzles, it is hard to find every piece when you’re looking for it. That empty gap is always in the back of the mind, taunting from the corner of your eye. It seems easy to find just one piece. But that piece is in a sea of pieces that look similar to it. They say that we’ll find it when we’re not looking. That happens often with puzzles; the piece will seem to pop into sight out of nowhere even though it was sitting right in front of you the whole time. But how do you force the mind to not look for what you want to look for? Maybe take a break and come back later. Or maybe marvel at what you already found: the edges, some clusters of similar color, and a few random unexpected pieces.

Or maybe we are thinking inside the box. Maybe we fit another piece in the wrong spot. Maybe the piece we are looking for looks completely different than what we thought. There are numerous ways to feel about the missing piece when it’s not there. And when we finally find it, we try our best not to take it for granted. We have been so focused on finding the one piece we forget about all the other wonderful pieces that are already a part of the picture. They are just as important as the missing piece.

Searching for the missing piece is perhaps a symptom of people that have nearly everything easily accessible. Once we have what we want, we then look for the new best thing. The search for missing pieces doesn’t end because the puzzle doesn’t really have borders. We pretend that it does, as if the purpose of life is to fill every gap and every void. Only then we will finally be happy? Just like chasing the magical dragon. Happiness is here and now. Content is here and now. Those things are not measured on a plate. That peace and fulfillment we seek for the missing piece is nowhere in the future. It’s at our nose. We just have to learn to focus our eyes better.

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Author’s Note #1: Although I am generalizing these feelings, of course, when I say we I mean me. Though, others may feel the same way so that's why I write in the second person.