Carpe Diem... and a handfull of other cliche's

There comes a time in everyone's life where they throw their hands into the air and exclaim one or more of the following;

"I've had enough!"
"This year I am going to do X, Y, & Z!"
"Today is a new beginning"
"Things are going to change"
"Seize The Day"
"Nothing goes right for me"
"I am not where I want to be in my life right now"
"I can't believe it's been 10 years (or 5, 20, etc.)"
"I'm almost 18, 21, 25, 30, 40, or any other magical age"
"Time flies"
"High school was the best/worst time of my life"
"Things are so much harder nowadays"

It is at these times when we fall into some sort of human instinct that tells us, eventually, to DO something about it. Sometimes it comes under the guise of a New Years Resolution, other times it's a Birthday Present to ourselves, or maybe, even, an engagement. Sometimes we publicly put it out there in the hopes that verbally casting into aural reality will make things happen. Other times, we blog about our goals/needs/desires/intent.

Regardless of the methodology or reason, the intent is always the same - to do something DIFFERENT.

I've repeatedly come to sudden "a-ha!" realizations about life being cyclic, almost oblong, in an orbit of life and patterns. Some we repeat the exact.same.way.exact.same.way. overandoverandoverandover again. Others we mODify EaCh TiMe ArOUnd, and yet keep repeating them in some way or another. There are even a few we refuse to repeat, simply placing on the proverbial horse blinders and ignoring the curse as it passes us by. And some, we simply blindfold ourselves in the hopes of forgetting what good (and bad) we are missing. And yet none of these tactics work to change things NOW. They simply teach us lessons for later, and/or save our skin until the next time around, the next temptation, the next repeat repeat repeat of the same old shit.

So what is there to be done? Someone, somewhere out there, was wise once, and said "The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting different results".

Well, what if we try different things and expect (and/or get) the same results? What then? Is that, by nature, the definition of sanity? And if such is true, should we just continue trudging through life in our semi-repetitive states?

A few years ago (ok, maybe more than 10... OH MY LORD, IT'S BEEN 10 YEARS ALL READY!), I was an impressionable young teen. I babysat for a young mom, and in her possession she had this book entitled the "Celestine Prophecy". While I'm not going to go into how much of these theory's are real/could be real/are completely bullshit, I will say this - there is one point within that book that just makes so much sense. It's basically about how the type of person our parents are (and their needs) sculpts us to make our own needs as well as abilities to draw others of both extreme opposite and extreme similar abilities towards us. In the best case scenario, we fit into these others much like a puzzle piece meeting one of it's matches. While they may not be the final piece in the puzzle, they are regardless integral to the final product.

In similar vein, I'm trying to reconstruct my life like a puzzle with missing pieces. I just KNOW some pieces are out there floating around in the world's version of ebay or goodwill, while others are just under my nose. Remember how easy the corner pieces were to place? I think of those as my inherited traits. Those edges who clearly matched other edges, and you could group together by colour? Those were my flawed attempts at dating people who were horrible for me, or my repetitive attempts to change my life by doing the same thing again and again and expecting the same results. But remember those beautiful pieces with a bit of a flower on them? How much you wondered exactly where it would go and how excited you would be to get that one into place so you could appreciate its beauty? Those are the pieces most sought after, and, unfortunately, every puzzle only has so many of them.

The good news? Each puzzle can also only have so many solid coloured, plain, repeating pieces, only so many corners, and only so many difficult places to fit.

The ironic part? Sometimes puzzles can have a piece that fits, but actually belongs to a different puzzle.