What's This Here to Teach You?

Everything that happens has at least one purpose: your transformation.

What do you do about one missing piece in a three-thousand piece puzzle?

For Christmas, we bought our family a massive puzzle of Hogwarts, figuring it would be framed on our game room wall by the time we returned to real life in the new year. We figured wrong.

It took almost three months to assemble it.

In the final weeks, it seemed increasingly likely we’d lost one piece along the way. It was oddly shaped—and the face of it contained both building and background—which should have made it relatively easy to locate, but it was nowhere to be seen.

I turned to Amazon, where the same puzzle was being sold at a discount because it was “used - in good condition.” There might be a piece missing from it too, but what were the odds it would be the very same piece? One in three-thousand. Pretty safe bet. I considered buying it.

“On the other hand,” my wife said, “you could frame it with a missing piece, as a reminder that nothing in life is perfect and that’s okay.”

That’s annoying, said a churlish little voice in my head, and a bit passive-aggressive too, if you ask me.

After all, it would take some serious commitment and perseverance to purchase a second puzzle and find that one piece. Commitment. Perseverance. Those are important personal qualities to develop in a person. My wife, on the other hand, was suggesting I cultivate surrender and acceptance. Those are important qualities, too, I guess. So, which was the right choice: commitment and perseverance, or surrender and acceptance?

In the final days of puzzling, the number of unplaced pieces dwindled further, and that one piece remained missing. Meanwhile, I contemplated that choice until, finally, I saw the answer:

There is no right answer.

Of course, there are some situations in which right action and wrong action are quite clear. When you’re not sure what those situations are, ask a kindergartner—their view of the world is not yet so clouded by ego. They see questions of personal integrity through the much clearer lens of the soul.

However, questions of personal growth are rarely so clear:

• Should you bite your tongue in this situation, or speak your mind?

• Should you ambitiously start that new venture, or rest on your laurels for a while?

• Should you end that relationship, or should you forgive and forget?

• Should you stick to your diet, or allow yourself that dessert?

• Should you gamble on that investment, or play it safe?

• Should you do one more round of chemo, or call hospice?

Our discernment in these situations gets disrupted by our desire to do what is right, when right rarely exists. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, only to discover there was no needle to begin with.

For the most part, life isn’t demanding you take the right path, it’s inviting you to take the transformational path.

A number of years ago, on my birthday, I arrived home one morning after absconding to a coffee shop for some quiet time. I pulled my brand new Honda Civic into the driveway and exchanged it for the family minivan, in which I’d drive the kids to school. Unfortunately, I didn’t pull the Civic in far enough.

Fifteen minutes later, I backed the minivan directly into its driver’s side door.

It seemed like the wrong thing to happen to a fella on his birthday, and repairing it immediately seemed like the right thing to do. However, at the time, I was in the midst of a midlife epiphany about my perfectionism. So, instead, I decided that dent was there to teach me how to live with imperfection.

I chose not to repair it.

The transformational path is oftentimes the path you both desire and deplore.

On the day I located the missing puzzle piece—right there in plain sight, along with all the other remaining pieces—I had already made up my mind. If the piece was missing, we wouldn’t be buying a second puzzle. We’d be framing this one with a hole right in the middle of it. Why?

Because of how annoyed I was at my wife when she suggested it.

It showed me how much perfectionism still lives on in me. More and more, I love that perfectionistic younger part of me—it was his plan for managing an uncertain and painful existence—but he also needs my guidance. He’s not having fun inside of his perfectionism. He needs to learn how to relax a little. He needs to learn how to be proud of a B on his report card, not because it was the best he could do, but because it was the best he was willing to do.

So, yeah, he and I were going to hang that incomplete puzzle on the wall.

After finding the piece, I contemplated throwing it away and hanging the puzzle without it, but that would just make me a perfectionist at being imperfect. The complete puzzle, then, was there to teach me that not every situation in life needs to grow you. Life will offer you enough lessons of its own. You don’t need to create extra assignments out of thin air.

What is the missing puzzle piece in your life right now,

and what is it here to teach you?

---

• If you’re not prepared to share a current challenge, what is an important lesson you learned from a missing puzzle piece in your past? Feel free to share in the comments, and I’ll be sure to reply!

• If you’re not feeling comment-y today, your support of this message would be invaluable. You can do so by tapping the LIKE and/or RESTACK buttons below. Thanks for your support!