Missing Pieces and the Will to Create(2022)

When kids are playing with LEGO, nine times out of ten what they ask for is help finding missing parts. This day was no different — we searched everywhere for the essential gear-shaped piece needed for the programming kit, but no matter how hard we looked, it simply wasn’t there.

Life works the same way: the rarer the piece, the more likely it is to be missing. You can rush out to buy a replacement, or you can give up and change your plan — both choices have their pros and cons. But there is, in fact, a third option available to us: we can make it.

Saying “The LEGO part is missing, so why don’t we build one?” might invite all kinds of objections from all kinds of people. Still, whether or not we can hold this third option in our mind — the option to create — is, I believe, essential for a richer way of living.

For so long, life seemed like a world of binaries: have it or don’t, buy it or quit. The moment we realize that we ourselves can invent the third path is the moment something quietly shifts inside us.