We Are Not a Missing Piece

There’s a book called The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, written as though it’s for children, but with a profound message adults can especially benefit from. The story is about a missing piece who was looking to find someone to roll with, someone to make him happy. After searching and searching, and thinking he’d found the one only to realize it wasn’t, he learned eventually that he could roll by himself.

The world can be very convincing in making us believe that we are a “missing piece”, that we have to find something or someone outside of us to make us feel whole. But this is not true. We are already whole, as we are, right here and right now. There is no condition we have to fulfill to be whole. There is nothing we need to change to be whole. There is no validity necessary from somebody else for us to be whole.

I love you.

I am listening to you.

I will always take care of you.

Have you yearned for these words to be said to you, and yet you have neglected to say these to yourself? Have you tried to squeeze out these words from the people in your life, and yet you have not freely said these words to yourself? Have you been going through your days wanting proof that you are loved and listened to and taken care of, and yet you have abandoned yourself, have not been connecting to your deepest thoughts, have not been taking responsibility to nourish yourself?

I love you. Feel that deep within you is your own capacity for love. Hold yourself with gentleness. Heal your own wounds. Fill up the gaps that are there with kind thoughts and words and actions. And when you unconditionally love yourself, the love that you receive from outside can be better appreciated, because you don’t need that outside love to feel whole, you would’ve already done that for yourself.

I am listening to you. How often do people ask you how you are, and you respond without much thought that you are fine and you are okay, but that is not truly what is happening? When was the last time you allowed yourself to dig deep so you can truly listen to what is happening in there? Some of the things you hear may not be easy and may be very uncomfortable, but they are wanting to be heard just the same. When you are able to listen to yourself, to acknowledge how you truly feel, you would no longer feel the desperate need to argue with people, to make them see what you mean, to insist that they feel a certain way, because you would’ve already done that for yourself.

I will always take care of you. Do you take care of others with the unspoken expectation that you will be taken care of in return? And when these expectations are not met, do you feel hurt and disappointed, do you feel life has cheated you? When we take care of others wanting others to take care of us in return, our relationships are like transactions where we need to constantly balance it out. But when we are able to take care of ourselves, our own needs, our own wants, then our relationships change too. Take care of yourself the way you would like to be taken care of. Be there for you. In times of joy, be there for you. In times of sorrow, be there for you. In times of uncertainty, be there for you. When you take care of yourself completely, you will have no need to oblige others to take care of you. And when they do so anyway, you have even more capacity to give, because your own well of love would be overflowing.

We are not a “missing piece”. We never were. We are whole, complete, missing nothing. And in times that we forget, all we need to do is remember.

I love you. I am listening to you. I will always take care of you.