THE MISSING PIECES

Follow the Findmyflis YouTube link to watch the full video of 'The Missing Pieces':

https://youtu.be/KMuD8ZVJaIA?si=vZBiV5ddnD7zNzXx

Never before had I seen anything like it in the beautiful underworld. A metal beam from the bottom trawler with a net attached stripped up everything in its path, fish and all types of amazing creatures, habitats and incredibly rich ecosystems, sparing nothing.  Even in protected waters this justified practice is going on. Wide enough to contain vast catches, these nets can cause a serious imbalance in the ecosystem with substantial amounts of carbon dioxide being released as a result of the destruction of the protection of these living organisms. They are endangering not only the ocean, but the earth and its inhabitants. As we all watched in horrified silence the scene with the bottom trawlers in “Ocean” the powerful and action-provoking documentary by David Attenborough, there was a unified shock and disgust by the disregard for the already precarious balance of life, the lack of respect for something so important that supports and protects us all. So much waste, so much desire to obtain more, to gain more control. So quietly dangerous and hidden. How can we be missing these pieces?

I woke to find that I was in my family home, it was true, I had lost my dad the night before after getting one of the last two spaces on the plane.  A whirlwind of thoughts hit me like a strong blast of air across the face on a blistery day by the sea, my reality pressing down on me like someone looking over me forcing my shoulders down, unable to protest.  One moment I was in Italy preparing for a few concerts, supporting my husband in his work, pushing forward with my creative projects and looking for more work with a seemingly positive future ahead, the next I was rushing on a plane, desperately looking for a car and was driven directly to the hospital to find out my life was about to take another turn. It was déjà vu from 25 years ago.

Brexit made it difficult to drive in Italy, making an already tough job hunt yet more difficult with restrictions on transport and location, once you felt included and free movement meant you could go anywhere in the EU as a linguist, jobs were abundant, now suddenly, you were having to declare your permanent visa and expiratory date on every application. Your passport was being stamped and you visited the immigration office to try and get things all organised, having an insignificant idea of what people escaping from war must feel like when they arrive and get trapped in bureaucracy and laws. It had been difficult after the loss of mum to leave the UK, but Dad had encouraged me to soar, to go to Switzerland, Italy and travel, and live.

After losing my dad, I have found myself in choices that don’t really exist. Those like me who emigrated, worked and found their significant other under the good faith of being part of the European Union, finding freedom and multiculturalism in the ability to build bases in at least two camps, who now, post-Brexit, find their futures uncertain and their options curtailed through no fault of their own. From the outside few see the missing pieces, the seeming choice to go between countries on your constant “holiday”, when your native country  sometimes looks at you with suspicion with your married name, even hearing “we don’t take foreign applications”, your varied job titles due to the necessity to be flexible in another country can be misinterpreted, and knowing that you needed to initially earn a certain amount to be able to live in the same country as your husband should you choose to relocate, adds additional pressure to an already testing situation.  Failure to succeed could result in you being forced to make choices that aren’t choices and this would not be the first time, not a free decision as many assumed looking in from the outside. This choice made by many is dividing families and causing unimaginable damage. Why are so many failing to see the missing pieces?

 Imagine you are putting together a puzzle you have just got or a Lego set you are going to build. You get all the pieces out of the box and you lay them out in front of you on the table. You look at the pieces, but until you are almost at the end, you will not be aware of any missing parts. This can be the same until we suddenly find ourselves in a difficult situation. We may be pretty sure we have all the pieces but until we are faced with a certain turn of events or a situation arises, we may not even realise that we are not prepared to confront this particular moment, even though we have been putting down the pieces of our lives and seeing a picture starting to emerge. Those missing pieces caught me off guard. I was so sure to have had it all figured out, yet there I was looking out over the emerging shape below of a country hidden in shadow as I arrived in the night at my destination and pushed back the suffocating thoughts.

Through my journey in faith, I know that we can get comfortable being stagnant, comfortable in accepting things that aren’t necessary the best for us, and at times we can suddenly find those missing pieces surfacing where you least expected them. Maybe they were in your past and you were convinced that you had already stored them somewhere securely so that they wouldn’t be found any more, but you didn’t expect that the missing pieces were actually more than you imagined. Suddenly those pieces need to be brought out, dusted down and their place found. It isn’t always a comfortable experience. It's one thing finding them, going through the nooks and crannies of the loft, and then if you are extremely fortunate, locating them after a short time. What comes next makes it a trickier process. Just like an interview, you research your subject, you research your interviewee well, you prepare the setting, how to speak to your interviewee, what to consider in their body language, and your own and it continues…You begin to analyse those missing pieces. Just like the interview preparation that is gradually taking form, so too the potential gaps begin to soar. The doubts and knowledge you thought you had secured, gradually start to seep through those cracks and leave you faced with questions you need to answer, either by confirming or denying their existence, but you need to do something.

We are all on a journey, but not everyone is willing or able to get the most out of life. Sometimes circumstances impede us from progressing forward, but there are times when we don’t want to look directly at our missing pieces and accept that they belong to us and we can do something with them. I was reading some articles on the child poverty epidemic in Britain at the moment in ‘The New Statesman’ and other sources and it really draws out how our missing pieces in society can directly affect us and how we can directly affect others by not dealing with the missing aspects in our lives.

If as a society we cannot face the extremely serious missing pieces that are jeopardising our children’s future and those in our nation and around the world, how can we afford to ignore our own missing parts? We see only a part of the puzzle when we look at a child who hasn’t had a shower recently, seems distant or not responsive in a classroom or outside, but do we ever stop to ask why? Why didn’t they come to school today? Why did they have a dirty uniform at the start of school and why did they seem reluctant to answer questions about their home life?

So many decisions whether intentionally or unintentionally made shape the lives of those around us, our own and society. If we want to make significant changes in our societies and our world, we have to start closer to home. To identify the missing pieces, we have to first acknowledge they exist. To do these we have to be willing to undergo the uncomfortable reality of knowing that they are our responsibility to manage. They may not have been caused by us, but to change the situation, the outcome of the missing pieces, we have to react where we can and admit they are a part of us, for better or worse, but they exist. Only in acknowledging their existence can we hope to start the catalyst of change. It’s easier to ignore difficulty, to not cause strife, not rock the boat, but who pays the price? Maybe it won’t be you now, but maybe it will be your children, your loved ones, future generations, and they will. There is a choice each of us can take, the question is do you have the courage to face the uncomfortable? Will you risk rejection, go beyond the disapproval and the judgement to be one of the few who will be willing to really see, and speak out about and fight for lasting, life-saving change?