The missing pieces of the puzzle

30th Aug 2008

Hello lovely people

Remember the competition. 

I recently read about a man that spent months building an 18 000 piece puzzle, only to discover that the last 5 pieces were missing.

Can you imagine his frustration and sense of failure?  He had a vision and worked diligently towards it, only to stumble at the last hurdle.  And he had no control over it.  He could have gone back to the manufacturers of the puzzle and demanded a replacement, but what if all the original pieces were provided and the dog ate the missing pieces?   Is this the time to punish the dog?  What if a child was attracted to the shape and colour of the missing pieces and took them away to play with?  Is this the time to punish the child?

We often live our lives like that.  We work very hard on our life’s task, whether it is raising children or achieving in a career or having a prize-winning garden or writing that book we all want to write. Then we get to the end of the task and we look at the result and we are disillusioned, because the result did not come even close to what we had in mind.

We forget the joy that we experienced along the way.  We forget the situations that challenged and stretched us and forced us to overcome our fears and our weaknesses.  We forget the numerous occasions where we touched other people’s lives and brought smiles to their faces.  We forget how many times people appeared in our lives at just the right moment and shared magic with us.

Sometimes we live an entire life of striving towards perfection.  We work very hard at whatever our life’s mission is, so that we can achieve perfection before we leave this earth. 

Others are very lucky in that they realise soon enough that every single day in our life is perfect.  We stop complaining about the weather and we start to appreciate the feel of raindrops on our faces. We feel the wind against our skins and see how this invisible wind blows tree branches in a particular pattern.  We feel the sunshine through our closed eyes and we see the colours of the rainbow in the sun.

Some people simply find joy in living every day.  They understand that looking back at yesterday results in guilt where we were not perfect.  They know that looking forward often results in fear of what tomorrow may hold.  They understand that today is the tomorrow that we feared yesterday, and that there is nothing to fear – ever.

Those people live in the moment and enjoy where they are.  That does not mean they do not see or plan any future for themselves.  It means that they understand that living in the moment equips us far better to visualise a perfect future and then live that future. 

This is a cliché but think about it.  If I tell you today that you only have a week to live, what would you do with that week?

I can hear you describing all the things that you have always wanted to do, and the usual item at the top of the list is telling people that you love them.  Then why wait? Why not do it today?

Start telling yourself that today is your last day in this life – because it is true.  Tomorrow you will be different and the world around you will be different.  When you believe that every day is your last day, you suddenly focus on the things that are really important to you.  You understand that living the joy and blessings of today is far more important than living the fear of tomorrow.  And you become alive.

If you then reach the end of your life and discover that the last five pieces are missing, you have a different perspective.  Does it matter how many pieces are missing, or does it matter what you did with the other 17 995 pieces?  Do you get the picture?

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Love and Light
Elsabe

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