What if your life already is perfect and that it always have been perfect and if the only thing that stops you from seeing this is how you picture a perfect life.
One of the things I often hear people struggle with is the work-life balance or the puzzle of life. It seems like it is keeping the most of the western population busy. I too have spent a large part of my grown-up life doing what I can to make the pieces fit together. I cannot claim being good at it but I know that I have lots of experience.
I am writing this because I hope that by exploring the true nature of this particular game (the puzzle of life) you might see it for what it is.. Although I cannot promise that you will like what I have to say but I hope that you will allow what you read to sink in. And remember, the truth will set you free, but first it will probably piss you off.
When I did some research on the swedish flavor of this phenomenon (the puzzle of life or work-life balance) I found traces of this word back to the beginning of the 20th century but it seems like the word have grown in ”popularity” this last decade. I hear many people describing how challenging it is to deal with this puzzle and even though I understand what they are talking about I am having a hard time accepting all the suffering that it seems to inflict in their lives.
Like almost everything in our language ”the puzzle of life” is a metaphor and I think this metaphor is quite helpful for dealing with this particular phenomenon, making pieces in a puzzle fit.
What I however see as more important is how we think about fitting pieces that don’t fit. I mean, it would never occur for a normal and sensible human being to FORCE pieces to fit if we can SEE that they won’t fit. And it is exactly here our parables with the puzzle of life ends. When it comes to our lives (btw: what makes out a ”life”) we are going to make the damn pieces fit, even if we are going to hurt ourselves and others doing it. It seems to me that we spend most of our time FORCING and not as much on SEEING.
When we are dealing with the famous puzzle of life our good senses has taken a leave of absence while we, with rolled up sleeves and guns blazing, are banging our heads, get burned out, stressed out with debts rising in both bank and guilt accounts and all this to satisfy what? What is it that we are trying so hard to accomplish?
My conclusion of why we are embarking of this journey of obvious craziness is that our senses in the moment are so distorted that we in fact fail to see that the pieces don’t fit together. Or perhaps we don’t want to see that they don’t fit.
However, the good news is that you don’t need to suffer from fitting badly shaped pieces in the puzzle of life simply because there is no such thing as ”the puzzle of life” or ”badly shaped pieces” for that matter. It is a made-up term which could translate to ”the rampage of the contemporary man to achieve something that is impossible”. What you are trying to achieve is not possible to achieve, at least not in the way you think.
Why, because you don’t clearly see what you are trying to achieve. The thing that we call ”the puzzle of life” or work-life balance is more about your self-image, how you see yourself. Where on earth did we pick up that life is about fitting pieces that don’t fit well and what do we expect to get out of this particular game?
What if your ability to skilfully joggle your carrier, sex life, your relationships to your spouse, your children and friends, the yoga classes, the full marathon, the halv marathon, the healthy eco-friendly food, your health and so on doesn’t lead to that what you thought it would lead to? I mean, if that in fact was the case, a lot of people around us would be really happy and content. Right?! But we only need to take a look around to see that this is not the case.
What if life isn’t about making things fit together but it is about leaving things as they are?
What if your life already is perfect, always have been perfect and that the only thing that stands in the way of you seeing it as perfect is your image of what would be perfect? Could it be that the puzzle of life with badly shaped pieces is not for you to fit? What do you think?
Aiming and going for the top only makes sense as long as what we seek actually is out there. Have you ever considered that you might already be there. What if you are ok, just the way you are. For real.
I think that every man and woman are entitled to fit how many pieces of the puzzle of life that they want. But I ask of you, don’t confuse yours and others happiness with how well you fit the pieces. These two are not the same and deep down inside I think you know this.
Ps. I don’t claim any of this as being true to anyone else than me but if what you just read strikes a cord within you, chances are that you have heard or seen something that might be important to you.