The Missing Piece

Shel Silverstein writes a fairy tale for adults in a little book called THE MISSING PIECE. This is the story: Once there was a circle that was missing a piece. A large triangular wedge had been cut out of it. The circle wanted to be whole, with nothing missing, so it went around looking for its missing piece. But because it was incomplete, it could only roll very slowly through the world. And as it rolled slowly, it admired the flowers along the way. It chatted with butterflies. It enjoyed the sunshine.

It found lots of pieces, but none of them fit. Some were too big and some were too small. Some were too square and some too pointy. So it left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching.

Then one day it found a piece that fit perfectly. It was so happy. Now it could be whole, with nothing missing. It incorporated the missing piece into itself and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle, it could roll very fast, too fast to notice the flowers, too fast to talk to the butterflies. When it realized how different the world seemed when it rolled through it so quickly, it stopped, left its missing piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away.

I believe the lesson of this story is, in some strange sense, we are more whole when we are incomplete, when we are missing something. The man who has everything is in some ways a poor man. He will never know what it feels like to yearn, to hope, to stretch his soul with a dream of something beyond what he knows.

It is said that there is a wholeness about the person who can give himself away, who can give his time, his money, his strength, to others and not feel diminished when he does so.
There is a wholeness about the person who has come to terms with his limitations, who knows who he is and what he can and cannot do, the person who has been brave enough to let go of unrealistic dreams and not feel like a failure for doing so. There is a wholeness about the man or woman who has learned that he or she is strong enough to go through a tragedy and survive. At that point, nothing can scare you. You have been through the worst and come through it whole. When we have lost part of ourselves and can continue rolling through life and appreciating it, we will have achieved a wholeness that others can only aspire to.

Rabbi Harold Kushner asked a poignant question is his book: WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE. Discussing illnesses, he asks, "if this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?" Pain is the price we pay for being alive. When we understand that, our question will change from, "why do we have to feel pain?" to "what do we do with our pain so that it becomes meaningful and not just pointless empty suffering?" We may not ever understand why we suffer or be able to control the forces that cause our suffering, but we can have a lot to say about what the suffering does to us, and what sort of people we become because of it. It is the result, not the cause of pain that makes some experiences of pain meaningful and others empty and destructive.