The wholeness of life
Once a circle missed a wedge. The circle wanted to be a whole, so it went around looking for its missing piece. Because it was incomplete, it rolled very slowly. But it could enjoy the sunshine. It found many different pieces, but none of them fit. So it left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching. Then one day the circle found a piece that fit it perfectly. It incorporated the missing piece into itself and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle, it could roll very fast, too fast to notice floaters or talk to the worms. When it realized how different the world seemed when it rolled so quickly, it stopped, and left the found piece by the road and rolled slowly away.
The lesson of the story, I suggested, was that in some strange sense, we are more whole when we are missing something. The man who has everything is a poor man in some ways. He may never know what to yearn for to nourish his sou. He never realizes there is someone around him, who loves him and gives him something that he has always desired subconsciously but has never possessed.