The following article is going to have a lot of broad assumptions, but bear with me. In case you didn’t know this yet about yourself, you are a mosaic of all of the people you’ve met and of the places you have and haven’t been.
There’s a nice analogy that people who come into your life and are meant to be there will fit like a puzzle piece. A missing part that suddenly somehow completes the image of your life and fills the void inside. It’s a nice sentiment, but not one I find to be true.
It implies that without them, you’re incomplete, or that you require some external force to complete you. That’s not necessarily true. Love and light come from within you (and don’t you forget that). It also implies that they should just fit, no need for growth or change, because all of the parts will just align. That’s also not true.
However, if you do meet someone who makes you feel as though the stars were something they designed for you in their toolshed, I believe that becomes part of your mosaic.
These mosaics are messy and colorful and have gaps. However, these gaps of space don’t require shoving a random piece of glass that doesn’t necessarily fit to make it whole. Mosaics can change and shift, adding more pieces and removing others, it molds and changes based on the pieces. It’s not structured and specific. It’s messy and constantly shifting.
What I’m trying to get at is that love and experiences change you, and that’s okay. It changes and molds you, but you shouldn’t be cramming any pieces into place just for the sake of filling a gap.
Sometimes, someone comes along and being with them results in your own mosaic shifting and adapting. The piece they add may come with other pieces that change the picture. That’s okay. Love is to be seen, but it’s also to be changed. Sometimes this can be scary, and that’s okay, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
Okay, okay, okay – lots of metaphors and wordy sentences aside, here’s what I’m really getting at. When I met my boyfriend, it wasn’t that we were polar opposites, but we weren’t exactly copy-paste. Fundamentally, we had some similar interests, a similar sense of humor, similar beliefs and values, but there wasn’t some metric checklist that deemed us fit for each other based on respective qualities.
Even with our similarities, we also were fundamentally different at the same time. For example, he is extremely extroverted and social. I am not. He lives life walking through doors, trying new things, dancing like no one is watching, singing like no one is listening and ultimately goes through life never knowing a stranger. I walk through life measuring social norms and trying to quietly keep all things “me” in a neat little box.
When we first started dating, we found ourselves butting heads sometimes at his extrovertedness in public and my social shyness. Over time, these differences complimented each other. I became more surefooted in myself, stopped letting the fear of how people would perceive me stop me from doing the things I wanted to do and experience. Love changed me.
He also wasn’t exactly convenient. What I mean is there wasn’t this perfect him-shaped cutout missing from my life. When he came along, it was completely inconvenient. I was content with my life. Why would I let this stranger come along and change my mosaic? Well, that’s the thing. Love had changed me. Being with him changed my routine, my priorities, everything.
He wasn’t convenient, but we made it work because we both made the choice to let our mosaics change. Love changed it.
Over time, our perspectives in life helped shape and teach the other a new way to look at the world. We changed and molded into these new versions of ourselves. Still uniquely our own person, but we grew alongside each other. I am by no means the same person I was over a year ago before I met him.
You’re going to grow and evolve with time, the people you meet are going to change you fundamentally. Time will ensure change happens, but it’s the people and choices that determine the kind. That’s not always a bad thing, embrace the new and scary. You’ve got this.
