So many of us live our lives as the sum of our pieces, and when you move a lot - as has been the case with me - you make friends with many who only see or know of a few of your pieces. They themselves become additional pieces of your puzzle but very few see what had come before, forming the underlying layer of your complex mosaic. This is why we tend to struggle with patience when friends and social connections are quick to draw quick conclusions and assumptions without regard to all the pieces that came before - the trials, the pains, the blood, the sweat. It's the big, dark downside of this age of immediate gratification and social media entertainment. The quick assumptions based on what's posted and patterns observed across the cold distances between computer monitors.
But to think this small frustration one step further is to begin to see what all those pieces - and what we want people to think of the sum or our parts - truly is. The ego. The soft shell of pride, worn as protective disguise. Our act. Our "schtick." The self-adopted persona that gets us through the day and the years.
Perhaps it is meant to be that our shells crack and fall apart in a brilliant flash and thundering boom across the stratosphere every once in a while. Maybe there is something so much more than what was once the sum of assorted pieces, and as cycles of bringing together and then falling apart continue through life the core essence of what our vessels hold - and for so long concealed - begins to be revealed.
In falling our pieces are scattered. In growing and changing and turning to the truth of who we really are and what we can become, a higher purpose responds to a higher calling. The spirit finally breaks free.
Vessels broken across the sky and in a brilliant flash of light. Too often we see only what falls to the ground. What really matters is what rises back to the sky.
There is so much more than mere pieces. We are so much more.
