The Abstract of a Normal Life.

Living a fulfilling life can mean many things to many people. So how do you know if you are? I think there are times when our struggles overwhelm us, and I think there are times when our joys go unnoticed, mostly by ourselves. Without knowing it, we can sometimes focus on our problems more than those things that make us truly happy. If we can just solve this, or solve that, we think we'll finally be at a place where we will be satisfied. 

Guess what? Living isn't always about solving the problems. It could be life was designed to be this huge puzzle and we will always be working on making all the pieces fit together. The thing is, the puzzle changes through time as we move into new phases of our lives. If you get stuck holding a piece of the puzzle from your past, it won't fit. The puzzle is different. 

So what do we do? How do you know things have changed? If you stop more often, even for a moment, and quit looking at the puzzle piece in your hand and look up at everything else around you, you will see and you feel what is different. You will know it's time to let go of the puzzle piece in your hand and pick up a new piece and begin anew with a better chance of success. 

But how? We've been looking so long to fit that one piece in, to make it belong, we know it inside and out. If you let yourself truly see and feel what's around you, you will know, what you are holding onto has no place and it is futile to try to jam it in where it will no longer fit. 

As a society, we call it 'letting go, and moving on'. We understand that for other people, but why is it so hard when it is us? Relationships, jobs, projects and sometimes personal beliefs have to be pieces that fit in the puzzle of today. If not, we're wasting our time. 

We know life is short, especially if we have experienced the loss of a loved one. Instead of trying to make our puzzle perfect and feeling unsatisfied that the pieces seem to never fit, maybe it's time to take a step back and be grateful for all the pieces we have managed to fit together. Smile at our accomplishments, and enjoy time as a way to see and feel alive, instead of feeling we are never caught up, never where we think we should be, and live in constant fear of failure, or of not doing something extraordinary before our time is up. 

What we forget to see and more importantly forget to feel is how fortunate we are for having a puzzle to work on at all. Whatever my puzzle looks like, it's my puzzle. And today, that's good enough for me.