I used to really love the Jerry Maguire movie. Sure, Tom Cruise was in it, and he could ruin just about any movie except Top Gun. The saving grace for me was really Renee Zellweger and Cuba Gooding Jr., largely because I thought Renee was a real hotty with her pouty portrayal of Dorothy and Cuba was hilarious as Rod Tidwell, spoiled sports star.
“Show me the money” even became the mantra of my company that year. We always had a slogan and while not as fun to say as “YAHTZEE!” when a new job came in, it still a pretty good slogan.
As you know, there is a part in the movie where Jerry professes his love to Dorothy.
Jerry Maguire: [babbling and struggling] I love you. You… you complete me. And I just…
Dorothy’s reply? “Shut up.”
Yes, he should have. Shut up that is. This idea that someone else completes you is such nonsense, and even if it weren’t, it would be virtually suicide in a relationship as it would mean that you come into it incomplete. You don’t have all your sh** together and you think you need someone else to fix what’s wrong with you and make you whole again.
I profess that I used to be this way. I suppose everyone is at some time in their life, a feeling that someone else, and sometimes anyone else, will complete them and make everything right in the world.
I know what you’re saying. “But Robb, everything is right in your world right now. Doesn’t Kat make you complete?”
Shocking as it may be, no. Neither one of us feels that we complete the other. We don’t need to. We’re already complete as we are. All those quirks, imperfections, overweight bags checked in from the past, insecurities, what-have-yous, have already made us complete.
Oh sure, we’ve been through the wringer of love a time or two, sent on to the rinse cycle and had our hearts tumbled around for a bit, getting lost a time or two along the way like that darned matching sock that never emerges from the dryer.
But that doesn’t mean we’re not complete or that we need someone else to do all the work of making us somehow whole again.
We mock the concept regularly. Kat likes to say that I make her “completer,” something that we both giggle about like a couple of kids at the schoolyard using the word penis for the first time. One says “You make me completer” and the other responds, “No, you make me completerer.” Then we laugh hysterically, something that would seem odd to an outsider but reflects our senses of humor and sense of selves to a tee.
It wasn’t until a few days ago that the concept of what we do for each other became more clear. Every morning without fail we text one another a little good morning note. It’s nothing too fancy but it’s become a huge part of our life together, right up there with Skyping for an hour or two or three each night when we aren’t together. Feel free to vomit from all the cuteness now, I’ll wait.
Everyone is a bit of a puzzle in life. Many of us are missing a few pieces, too. For Kat and I, we each seem to be the last piece of a puzzle that we didn’t know was really missing. The picture looked just fine without this last piece, the edges neatly formed and all the holes in the middle all filled in.
But then we came into one another’s lives and as if my magic, an additional piece fell into place, making the puzzle completer. Now you know where this comes from, our wacky attempt to note who made who completer, or completerer.
It’s a very different place to be. It’s akin to the joke in our little family about who would really want a knight in shining armor. You want someone who has been roasted a bit by a fire breathing dragon, is dented from being battle tested, who’s been to hell and back, only to complete his journey at your bedside, waking you up from the slumber you’ve been in all your life as you wait for your prince to finally arrive after his long and arduous quest to finally find you.
This isn’t to say that the puzzle is complete. True, our respective puzzles are and they really were all along. But now we have a new puzzle to work on, one that has tons of pieces strewn about somewhere, ones we have to go find together so that we can work on a new puzzle that will be our life together.
The beauty of that puzzle, unlike the two we have completed separately, is that no one knows what it is supposed to look like. We get to decide for ourselves, adding new pieces one at a time as we come across them, finding where they fit best and shaping the puzzle over years to match what we want it to be.
Only towards the end of our puzzle-piecing journey will we have any idea of what we have made, what the picture actually ended up looking like. It’s kind of a cool way to look at life, the journey we complete on our own and the one we create together.
I’m sure you have your own puzzles that you’re working on. Even when you think your own puzzle is complete, there are others to work on, be they ones you’re creating with someone you want to spend every day of the rest of your life with, or a new found friend where the pieces are only beginning to reveal themselves.
It’s one of the many things that make life worth living, these personal puzzles, always waiting to be solved. And here I had the umbrage in my youth to think that I didn’t like puzzles when I was really working on one all along.
In the Emerald City, no longer having to struggle with “Polar Bear in a Snowstorm,”
– Robb