i think the real treasure in life is...

not money, true love, somewhere over the rainbow..i think it is plain, odd shaped, puzzle pieces.

i think every time we meet any challenge successfully, every time we do something right, every minisual meaningful moment, we collect one more little puzzle piece to help us create a meaningful life.

i think kids who are having a hard time just have not had the opportunity to collect enough puzzle pieces to help them see what their own picture in life can be all about. i think if they grow up with not collecting enough puzzle pieces or not knowing how to fit them together..life becomes bleak, hopeless, beyond their control..just a jumbled mess of unhappiness.

and kids don't know that each and every puzzle piece is of profound importance to them because we don't tell them. we don't celebrate when they find one...it is too small for us to even notice...we want to see the whole big picture of them laid out fully complete for us. what kind of message are we sending to them?

why don't we tell them that each little struggle they survive is a victory..that each tiny thing of goodness they do is a another miracle piece of the puzzle they are building?

how many adults do we each know whose life is just a mess of chaos..puzzle pieces loose and lost, clutter collecting dust in some forgotten corner.... not only in their lives but messing up others too? i think it is because they never learned that those little seemingly useless pieces of seemingly the same shaped and colored cardboard, were really a thousand tiny keys to their own happiness.

but even adults can at some point stop and choose to look at the scatterings of lost opportunities all around their feet. they can take a deep breath, sit down and patiently look and examine each one and try to find another to fit it to. with time and effort and a wholesale committment, they too can one day have their life laid before them and see what treasures those keys opened up inside of them. it is more work because unhappinesss has sucked out the light and made the good things harder to see, it has blurred the edges of what was right or wrong or good or bad and how they could have put things together differently.

but who wants to feel at their last moment of life that their life was useless, of no value, nothing special..just a never ending frustration of wanting, needing, searching without ever getting anywhere? i don't think anyone ever wants their last thought to be that.

for the kids tho...we have to be proactive... show them what those puzzle pieces are for..we have to teach them that each tiny good thing they do is connected to the whole picture of living for them.

and that is the problem with kids today...we are too busy...we are more interested in the big things that stare us right in the face, we are too lazy to smile at childish small attempts at goodness, at rightness, at building success, to tell them what a wonderful thing they are doing, collecting and fitting tiny pieces of puzzles together to shape the rest of their life.

that's my deep thought before i head off to work today.