Working on an Integrated Life

This is what life mostly seems like to me: an immensely complex jigsaw puzzle I am attempting to complete without a box lid picture as a guide while on a small boat traveling through all kinds of weather. I am always losing pieces on the floor or going to get some food and coming back to find I have lost or misplaced a piece on the counter or huge sections slide from the table and I have to straighten out connectors and end up trying to fit non-adjacent pieces together, forcing them into place even though I have some sense that they do not belong together.

These days I am trying to simplify my life to the point where I am working on just being a person focused on being true to the things I value: compassion and peace. I am picking out the pieces that fit into this puzzle, from a huge multitude of possible pieces that distract me from the ones I want to use. Some fear-based or continuity-based pieces attract my attention, fear and complacency are so distracting and attractive, that I am always trying to accommodate pieces that I should know do not fit with a pattern of acceptance and open-hearted living that I am hoping to create.

It is so easy, in this often scary and difficult life, to feel threatened by possible future events and incidents that may never occur. I know I cannot see the future, yet I am always fortune-telling, usually catastrophic futures of destitution and dissolution. But when I look back at what I can remember of my past, I regret most the times I was not generous or had not taken a chance to be kind out of fear of some imagined consequence. The few times when I ended up regretting being fooled or overreached out of compassion have been rare and in the end, had almost no effect on my life. The missed opportunities to give myself to others authentically have amounted to most of the regrets I still feel every day. So I am trying to focus in the present on being present and aware of each piece I add to my puzzle. I hope to become more awake to all the opportunities and possible ways I can more consciously fit my life into an ever more complex and inclusive pattern, a limitless all-encompassing pattern that continuously flows through me and all that is. The almost impossible trick is to keep focus effortless and sustained on remaining true to each moment. I plan to continue working on this puzzle for as long as I have to work on it, and eventually, I will find myself integrated into the puzzle with no separation, just flowing with all the changes interacting seamlessly with existence. I don’t know if this is even possible but I aim to keep working on it.