Are You Looking For Mr. Right to be Your Missing Piece

Sometimes a quote just grabs me.  I find myself flooded with memories of the many “a ha” moments I experienced as I learned a seemingly simple lesson someone was able to encapsulate in just a few succinct words. 

I rarely received flowers, nor gifts of any kind from my early suitors.  They’d sheepishly come empty handed mumbling various excuses.  The upshot was that they were too lazy to make the effort, yet hopeful, none the less.  One day, out of the blue, a workmate brought me a dozen red roses. Low and behold, I had no vessel to put them in.  I promptly went out and bought myself a gorgeous crystal vase.  I declared that one day I’d find myself using the vase all the time because my Mr. Right would, among other things, bring me flowers.

My Mr. Right…I imagined what he’d look like, and how he’d treat me. How it would feel for us to be together.  He’d love me, and I’d feel whole.  He’d complete me. He’d make everything right.  That’s what Mr. Rights do, after all.

Shortly after I began dating my former husband,  a friend gave me Shel Silverstein’s book, The Missing Piece.  I’d found my missing piece, my Mr. Right.   I had my man, work that was meaningful to me, and friends; all the boxes were checked.  Yet I still felt insecure, disconnected, and like something was missing; I came to believe that life was  like that.  Little did I know that the missing piece was not someone else.  No matter how wonderful any Mr. Right might be, I discovered that Mr. Right was not my missing piece.

I had been practicing yoga for, gosh, many months before I “sat” quietly and slipped, very briefly into a meditative state. Love and peace filled me.  As I practiced over several years, I began to feel that sense of wholeness.  I experienced being flooded with love and the ability to carry it within me as well as allowing it to slowly heal me and to reconnect from within.  My garden began to take shape.

I read, I meditated, I nurtured myself.  The inner and outer began to find a balance.  I began to see the importance of loving one’s self, working to heal, working to nurture that which may have gone un-nurtured almost a whole life time.  Thus my garden was sown.

I chose not to look for a person, experience or circumstance to “complete” me.  After years of work, my garden blooms.

Today, my partner brings me flowers, in fact, rare is the week we don’t have a bouquet on our dining table to enjoy in that crystal vase I bought so many years ago.  We don’t complete each other, we complement each other because we are each already whole.