This weekend I was humbled to have the opportunity to tell a very important story of mine to a group of strangers who quickly turned into family. I told my story with no reservations, no shame. After all, your story is just that: yours. No one knows it better than you. It is your job to own it and love it, despite possible imperfections or rough edges.

Each story that we rack up in this crazy life of ours — and the subsequent relationships that come along with them — is exactly what makes us who we are, quirks and all. These stories are like pieces to the puzzle of our life, making up the big picture that we will never fully see until much further down the road.

Sometimes the pieces to our puzzle fit when we least expect them to. It could happen right when we need it to, or perhaps at a time that seems a little bit off. Isn’t that so frequently how life works? The pieces reveal themselves when you’re off going through the motions of your typical routine. Yet at the very least, just having the pieces out on the table to begin with lets you know, “hey, you’re on the right path. This is a sign that you should keep going in this direction.”

The good news is, you don’t have to leave the completion of your puzzle, and your story, to chance and to timing. You’re allowed to take some of the pieces out of the box and put the puzzle together yourself. It’s not an easy thing to do; you’re staring at an incomplete picture, and that can be scary as hell.

But if you can find joy in the process, rather than becoming anxious about the questions that remain unanswered, that is where true happiness and love shine through.

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke