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Jeannie Ewing's avatar

Kelly,

What a great question--what is the missing puzzle piece, and what am I going to do about it? That's a fantastic journaling prompt. I might scribble that in my journal to delve into more deeply when I have another quiet moment.

What struck me about what you wrote today was something you asked in your series of questions. Yesterday I commented on another post that sometimes kindness happens in the form of restraint rather than in a deliberate act of helping or compliment. It can be a negative (refraining from saying something hurtful) instead of a positive (doing a good deed). It seems to me that most of maturing in personal growth involves this artful balancing act of whether we should remain quiet or speak up, whether we should be substracting or adding to a situation. There's no panacea and always nuance.

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Alexander Lovell, PhD's avatar

I laughed out loud at the part where you considered throwing away the found puzzle piece just to maintain the imperfect narrative. I can totally see myself doing something like that! I once spent hours trying to assemble IKEA furniture, only to realize I'd put one piece in backwards at the very beginning. Instead of fixing it, I considered just leaving it that way, as a testament to my own stubbornness. It's funny how we cling to these self-imposed narratives, even when they're completely ridiculous. Your honesty about your own perfectionistic tendencies is so refreshing. It makes me feel less alone in my own struggles.

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