This week, my #bestie has been doing a puzzle.
For some reason, I was impossibly envious.
I wanted a puzzle of my own to do.
Until I had a realisation.
That I already had a mammoth puzzle.
That I've been putting together the pieces of my own life puzzle for quite some time now.
Perhaps that's why I've felt this envy.
Because I wasn't able to fully connect to the feelings that I had within. In terms of wanting to be whole.
And finally, I feel as though I'm complete.
I'm done with the puzzle that is me.
There are no more missing pieces.
Through the past few weeks, I have had an interesting journey.
Actually, that's a lie.
I feel as though I've had a very interesting year.
But for some reason, the past few weeks have been more interesting than anything else.
And for some bizarre reason, I have become an "oracle" of sorts for friends reaching out, and requiring life advice from me.
Me.
Of all people.
But then I reigned myself in, and tried to comprehend that in a lot of ways, I am like the fictional "Yoda" (even if I lovingly bestow this title upon my beautiful friend Karen, who I often seek counsel for countless things).
So I sat quietly, and tried to make sense of everything that has been occurring around me of late.
And my mind kept bringing me back to the physical puzzle that Karen was attempting to complete.
But I amended it to the spiritual sense.
The puzzle that is our lives.
How we so often seek out others to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.
And I think this is where we are getting it all wrong.
We are all just winging it in this relatively short lifetime of ours. I truly believe that.
I was thinking about this life puzzle.
How the pieces are all just random pieces. That we try our best to make sense of, and attempt to fit in those pieces into the place where it looks as though they belong.
We are looking to assemble that elusive big picture.
To make our lives whole.
Complete.
In life, we attempt to put ourselves together as best we can.
And it made me think. About puzzles.
And about soul mates.
Something I'm totally intrigued, and mesmerised by, being the romantic that I am.
(I'm a goddamn writer. Of course I'm a romantic...)
That only when you have all of the pieces of your metaphorical life puzzle together, are you able to attract that soul mate, that is right for you into your life.
If you're missing the pieces from your own "life puzzle", you can never expect to take those pieces from someone else's. Whose puzzle looks very, very different from your own.
If you do, You'll always be searching for that "missing piece". Tirelessly searching. And often fruitlessly.
A life partner, a soul mate, whatever you want to call it, is there to compliment what is. To make you into a better person. To shine light on what's already there. Not to fill in the blanks.
You shouldn't be looking to someone else to fill the gaps. You should first be complete within, before you are ready to invite that other "complete" into your life.
I am so thankful that I gifted myself the experience of having a year alone.
To discover who I truly am. To learn all about me as a woman. To assemble all of those scrambled puzzle pieces, and to put them all back together so I am complete, and whole.
Because I had all of them there to begin with, regardless of whether or not I knew where they all fit. And if i possessed all of them at all.
And it brings me back to the whole "fear, and love" thing, that I have touched on quite a bit of late.
It is our own fear and insecurities that trick us into believing that we need the other person to "complete" us.
It's not that at all.
We need to understand that we are enough. To know that we really need to complete that puzzle on our own, before we are ready to invite another puzzle in.
We need our self love, to push us to that next stage, where we are ready to accept what the universe sends us. To have the wisdom to comprehend the reason behind why it's unfolding as it is.
And sometimes, it sends us the unexpected.
Something that we never anticipated in our wildest dreams.
And that the beauty of completing the missing pieces of our own puzzle, is recognising the other persons wholeness.
That once we have all of those puzzle pieces firmly in place, and are able to see that big picture.
Only then are we able to connect with the complimentary piece to our landscape that shows us the beauty of our own complete picture, and who brings so much more beauty to what already is.
In fact, they may enhance that complete beauty to a level you never anticipated.
So today, I ask you to look deep within, and try and figure out what it is that is missing in your life.
Don't seek those missing pieces from anywhere outside of yourself.
Don't look for someone else to complete you.
Look to what you already possess within, and watch what happens for you.
You might be surprised how those missing pieces of the puzzle all align to illuminate that light that you already have had all this time. And to compliment the completeness you have fought so hard to attain.