The Jigsaw

A single piece in a jigsaw puzzle is whole and complete and if you remove it from the bigger picture it’s form doesn’t change, the pattern on it remains the same, and it exists entirely as apiece in its own right. Put it next to the other parts of the puzzle and a full image begins to emerge.

Last week, whilst watching a film I found myself feeling full, complete, happy and content in my own self for the first time in a while. It was one of those right films, at the right time, in the right mood moments and with the perfect amount of abstract story to allow me to take the narrative and fit it into the parts of my brain that had been flailing for answers. I left the cinema feeling happy in my own skin and even with a full acceptance that my double chin is a part of me and actually I’m pretty okay.

At the end of January I went freelance, as a writer, as an Actor, as a voiceover artist and as any real odds and jobs (to begin with). The last four weeks have been about exploring and every single day I’m learning something new, about me, about my creative process, about the industry I am trying to get into and about life in general. I feel very alive, even full to the brim. I also feel permanently terrified and lost but often these negatives can help to just keep us awake and open to the present moment.

So much of life is spent worrying about tomorrow or thinking about yesterday and I simply haven’t had time to do either, unless you count the once daily panic about money, a worry that exists in the future because in fact financially I’m okay. I have saved enough to buy myself time but I still panic about that fictional point in the future when the money has all gone. Which is ridiculous because if I stay in the present moment then I have money and literally anything could happen between now and the day it runs out. So it’s a wasted worry and wasted energy, as all future projections are.

The last few weeks spent exploring who I am and trying to package my skills for ‘sale’ has bought me back into focus. I can see myself again and the reflection isn’t all that bad after all, in fact I am in technicolour. Which got me thinking, it is so important that we nourish whom we are in order to keep ourselves in the centre of our own lives. It is so easy to get lost in the bigger puzzle, to cling to all the pieces that surround us as a way of holding onto our identity. Be that your job, your finances, your family, your partner, your friends or all of the above at once. We begin to believe we need the other components to be whole. But in fact we are complete.

The other bits, our job and the people around us, they make up the tableau of our whole life and when you take one away yes that changes the image, possibly even a void is left that cannot be patched up, like when death visits and takes a loved one away, but our part, our shape, our form remains intact.

And if you try and fit a piece of the puzzle in the wrong place, sometimes it can look right for a bit, it can seem to fit but eventually another fragment comes along or the fact that the puzzle doesn’t quite sit right will become clear and you accept it is time to move it to it’s rightful place. It’s still a part of the sketch of your life but it’s not always the picture you thought it was going to be when you started drawing. And that’s okay.

All we can do is stay in the frame, remember we are whole and that life is a puzzle which we don’t have to figure out all at once, it will become clear in time, it will be complete only when death takes us and figures of it will go missing along the way, leaving gaping holes, areas of it will shift and change as life becomes clearer, some bits will fit somewhere unexpected but you as a piece in it, you are complete, you are all you ever need to be, here, today, right now – you are enough.