Are you missing a piece of your puzzle?
How do you know?
It’s impossible to tell you are missing a piece until the puzzle is almost complete.
Learning something new is like doing a jigsaw puzzle with only a fantasy to guide us; A blurry image, at best.
We open the box and get started, scattering the pieces across the floor and flipping them over one by one, unsure where to start.
The edges or corners are usually decent places to start making ground.
Nothing goes anywhere at first.
But after some time, a piece or two come together.
Then three or four, and more, until we start to see what we’re working towards.
The pieces begin to come together faster.
Sometimes we won’t find a piece, but it’s not missing — we have to put together some other pieces first.
By the time we get to the end, the picture is almost complete, even if one piece is still missing.
We can fill in the blanks ourselves.
And that missing piece always turns up, eventually.