The piece that wouldn’t fit…

I’ve taken to building woodcraft models with my 4-year old… the one we’re working on right now is called “American Villa”. Today, after fitting in most of the basic structural pieces, I realized I missed one important one… and now it won’t fit in! (see photo)

In order to fit it in, I’d have to either CUT out the three protrusions on the piece and push it in… or take apart the entire structure and philosophy of the “American Villa” that we painstakingly put together! Taking it apart would also mean breaking a few of the bigger pieces, since these flimsy!

What does one do with ideas that don’t fit? Or feelings? Thoughts? Philosophies? People? Does one break them so they can fit in, or does one take apart the structure of one’s entire reality and identity in acknowledgment of the non-fitting object?

TAKE IT APART! Screams my inner rebel… if you give in to the structure once, you will always be a slave to it!!

Just then, the phone rang. It was my mentor – within seconds, we were deep in a discussion on the Ashtavakra Gita… And while talking to her, without fully realizing what I was doing, I picked up the giant scissors and chopped off the piece, and pushed it in…it didn’t matter much after all… the Villa looks great!

When faced by age-old dilemmas, one reaches for a HIGHER TRUTH, to help put things into perspective. The answers to certain questions may seem facilely obvious… but they could be right or wrong depending upon whether we take an along-the-edges view or a thousand-mile-high view… in the words of the wise Snoopy…

“If you think about something at 3 a.m. in the morning and then again at noon the next day, you get different answers…”