I sat in the audience watching the happy couple exchange their vows in front of a hundred family and friends. The backdrop of the ocean behind the floor-to-ceiling windows and the glowing of the candles on the white-linen-covered altar gave an ethereal mood to the scene. I was happy for my friend, the bride, but something in the ceremony really bugged me. There were 3 glass containers set out on the table between the bride and groom. The container in the middle was empty, and the two on either side of it were each filled with a different color sand. The officiant performing the ceremony explained the symbolism of the containers–the ones on each side represented the individuals embarking on this union of marriage. By pouring their respective vessels into the center one, they were surrendering their individuality and committing to being united as a couple for the rest of their lives. I may have audibly scoffed when I heard this. Also, he probably didn’t use the term “surrender their individuality,” but that’s how I interpreted it. Anyway, whatever he actually said was closer to that phrase than I was comfortable with. If you read previous posts of mine you’ll learn that I fully acknowledge that I have been a little “judgy” in the past and have tended to see the world a little too black-and-white at times. In the season of my life when I witnessed this ceremony I was very cynical about relationships, and marriage in particular. I felt there was an expectation that people have to give themselves up when they enter a relationship, and I had/have always been someone who wants to be “free.” I didn’t plan on letting my personal grains of sand get lost in a sea of someone else’s grains. My container would remain sealed.
Of course I have learned a lot over the years and through many relationships about how to maintain individuality while supporting another person and tending to a partnership that requires give-and-take to sustain itself. BUT, I have retained one core belief related to relationships–I believe we should do as much work on ourselves as possible, before, during and after engaging in a partnership. Seeking partners to provide us with something we feel is missing in our lives will only lead to frustration and an even bigger feeling of emptiness. I believe we should never need another individual in our lives, but instead feel that we want them in our lives and choose being with them every single day, versus choosing to be without them.
It is also futile to expect that a single person can provide everything we want in a partnership–e.g. stability, humor, romance, shared activities, understanding certain challenges we are having. It makes more sense to have a tribe of individuals in our lives that match the various facets of our personality and who can relate to us on the various levels of our being. Maybe our romantic partners don’t share the same taste in music or love for travel. That shouldn’t mean that we delete those parts of ourselves by pouring all of our sand into a common vessel. I’d rather use rocks instead of sand so we can easily pick out the portions that we want to maintain for ourselves and that honor our individuality. I’d put into the middle vessel the rocks that are necessary to sustain a long-term partnership with shared responsibility to respect one another and support one another’s continued growth as individuals. My shared rocks might represent empathy, compassion, support, and compromising on watching sports I’m not interested in, but I’ll keep my travel rock and my concert-going rock in my original container and find another friend who shares those interests with me. In this way, I honor both the self and the partnership to which I’ve chosen based on a want, not a need.
Here’s another way to look at this–If you remember your chemistry classes in school we learned about mixtures versus solutions. When you combine a solid and a liquid, you get a solution. Once the solution is made it is impossible to recognize the original components that made up that solution. In some cases you can separate the solution back into its original components, but it requires a lot of effort, sometimes massive amounts of heat and time, and in the process you lose a little bit of each part of the solution. In fact, the solvent will need to be completely evaporated to reveal the solute. The original components are never the same. If, on the other hand, you combine two solids to create a mixture, you can often still see the individual components and you can also more easily separate them. And the larger the particles you’re mixing, the easier it is to separate. A mixture of 2 colors of sand would be nearly impossible to separate, but a mixture of two different colors of rocks would be easy to pick out the individual components. In my humble opinion, I believe we should make ourselves as complete as possible before mixing in with those around us so we can still see and know ourselves even when intermingled with friends, romantic partners, even professional colleagues. It can be too easy to dissolve and lose our identity if we don’t do the work ahead of time to maintain our authentic form.
In the movie “Jerry Maguire,” Jerry tells love interest Dorothy Boyd, “you complete me.” I would wager that the majority of people who watched this scene got at least a little misty at this confession. The line romanticizes what we have been led to believe is the ultimate promise of love, that we are someone else’s one-and-only and they can’t possibly live without us. But I think the line would serve us all better if we rearranged and added a couple of letters: “You compleMEnt me.” I can still see “ME” in that phrase. It’s a dangerous premise to believe we need someone else to complete us, or that someone else needs us to complete them. We should aim for relationships that honor and complement one another, that celebrate our individuality and the work we have done to become who we are.
Shel Silverstein, best known for his book “Where the Sidewalk Ends?” wrote a couple of lesser-known books that brilliantly describe the importance of feeling whole versus seeking fulfillment outside of ourselves. In his book “The Missing Piece” he tells the story of a circle with a pie-shaped piece missing. Because that piece is “missing,” the incomplete circle rolls along a little more slowly, but that also means he is able to stop and talk to a worm, or smell a flower. He is even slow enough that a butterfly lands on him, which he describes as “the best feeling of all.” And because he has a missing piece, he is able to sing a song through the open mouth-like space in his shape. He sings a song as he rolls along trying to find his “missing piece.” He finds some pieces that seem to be the right shape at first, but they are either too small, too big, too sharp or too square. He finds another one that fits but he doesn’t hold it tightly enough and he loses it. Then he finds one that fits, but he holds it too tight and it breaks. Finally he finds a piece that is just right. It doesn’t seem to belong to anyone else so they decide they are each others’ missing piece and together they form a complete circle that rolls along much faster…so fast, in fact, that the original “incomplete” circle is no longer able to stop and smell a flower, or talk to a worm. It couldn’t even sing its song anymore because there was no room for the words to come out with the missing piece stuffed into the previously-empty space in the circle. At this moment he has an epiphany; he releases the “missing piece,” and continues to roll along slowly again, enjoying those activities he loved when he had viewed. himself as missing something. Perhaps he still wanted companionship, but didn’t need the type that was going to stifle him?
The second book, “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O,” gives us more insight into how individuality and companionship can co-exist. Here we follow the pie-shaped “missing piece” that was left behind in the first story. The sequel details how the missing piece tries to find someone to come along and take it somewhere, given that he doesn’t have the right shape to roll on his own. After numerous attempts and failures to find the right shape he can fit into and that can carry him (some too big, some too small, some too “hungry,” some too “delicate,” and so on), he meets a shape that looks different from any he has previously encountered. It is a full circle with no space in it for him. It is “The Big O.” The missing piece asks if he can be the Big O’s missing piece, to which the Big O replies, “I am not missing any pieces,” and advises that the missing piece try to roll along by himself. When the missing piece points out that he can’t roll because he is not shaped for rolling, the Big O replies, “corners wear off, and shapes change.” And then he says goodbye to the missing piece but adds, “perhaps we will meet again…”
The missing piece sits alone for a while, then decides to try and take the advice of the Big O. He pulls himself up onto the point of his wedge shape and plops over onto his other side. Then he does it again. And again. And with each pull-and-plop its corners start to wear down and round out. As its shape slowly changes it begins to move from flopping to bouncing, and eventually to rolling. You might predict what happens next…we see the “missing piece” rolling side-by-side with the “Big O.” Side-by-side. Not part of one another, separate, individual, complementary companions who retain their individuality.
If Dorothy Boyd had read Shel Silverstein she would have replied to Jerry Maguire, “You don’t complete me, because I’m already complete. But once you work on yourself and feel empowered to be complete on your own, perhaps we could roll side-by-side and enjoy one another’s company.”
I know, I know. It’s not quite as catchy as the iconic 3-word phrase that Tom Cruise has brainwashed into us with the skill of a cult leader, setting unrealistic expectations for romantic partnerships since 1996, but from my standpoint it is even more romantic to be viewed as a complete human with individual thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes and the ability to stand on one’s own two feet when needed, and having the option to enter into partnership by choice rather than necessity.
We sometimes give ourselves too little credit when it comes to our ability to provide for ourselves. I believe that we need human connection, but I hope we can all recognize that we have the ability to be whole within ourselves, and that we can choose to roll alongside each other to enhance our life experience, not because we feel we are missing a piece within ourselves.