Now and then, I come across children’s books that express profound life lessons through soul-stirring imagery and minimalist choice of words. Reminiscing about an age that thought in metaphors and spoke in rhymes, these books talk on different levels to small children, bigger kids and adults.
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly.
E.B. White
And such a book is Shel Silverstein’s The Missing Piece Meets the Big O.
Multiple shapes make way to the lonely little piece. And yet, something is still missing.
Through subtle metaphors, we recognize patterns of failed relationships when two people’s missing puzzle pieces don’t match (“one didn’t know a thing about fitting”, “and another didn’t know a thing about anything”, “some had too many pieces missing”, “some had too many pieces, period”, “one was too delicate”, “one put it on a pedestal and left it there”, “some rolled by without noticing”, “some looked too closely”).
It looks like the promised fairy tale ending is here.
But no, pain lurks around.
As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry remarked,
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.
These last images have that quiet quality of good children’s books that speak about big truths in simple words. In a few pages and words, we assist at the passing seasons of a seemingly perfect relationship, from blissful coexistence to dissolving farewell.
Then the missing piece meets another shape.
Profound messages are captured again in just a few strokes of dialogue.
“But I have sharp corners,”
said the missing piece
“I am not shaped for rolling.”
“Corners wear off,”
said the Big O
“and shapes change.”
And so, Big O goes in its way, leaving the missing piece alone. However, the seed of thought was planted.
After some time, the missing piece starts contemplating changing itself and trying the impossible to roll itself. It flops over. Doesn’t matter. The missing piece melts its pain away, “liftpullflopliftpullflop” again and again, bumping, bouncing, rolling, and no longer expecting other shapes to fill its empty holes. The missing piece grew into its own someone that came along and took it somewhere.
The BIG O turns up again along the way, closing the story with no words necessary.
Through fail and rise, and fail and rise, the no longer missing piece discovers the greatest thing it will ever learn. Just to love and be loved in return by the one. Itself.