Understanding is born when the pieces flow together

In a quiet village nestled between whispering hills, lived a boy named Ilan who was known for collecting broken things. Glass bottles, shattered tiles, splintered wood — if it was cracked, he kept it. But most precious to him were the mirror shards. He believed that if he found all the broken pieces scattered across the land, he could rebuild a legendary mirror that once reflected truth itself.

Each day, Ilan wandered with a journal in hand, sketching what he saw and noting where each shard lay. But as he gathered more, the pieces never seemed to fit. Some edges were too sharp. Some reflections too distorted. He began to doubt: Was this mirror ever real?

One night, an old wanderer arrived — cloaked in silence, eyes like moons. She watched Ilan struggling to piece the mirror together.

“Why do you chase fragments?” she asked.

“Because the whole must be hidden in the parts,” Ilan replied.

She nodded, then led him deep into the forest where moonlight danced through branches. There, flowing like liquid silk, was a pool of still water — unbroken, whole.

“This is not made of parts,” she said, “but it reflects everything.”

Ilan leaned over, and for the first time, saw not just his reflection — but the interwoven shape of all things: forest, sky, his own yearning, even the mirror shards in his bag.

“You’ve been trying to understand by collecting,” she whispered, “but understanding is not found in fragments. It’s born when the pieces flow together.”

Seeking understanding is about building a pool of knowledge that reflects truth or at least takes you as close to it as possible. Your Framework of Understanding is that Pool in making.

This process of seeking understanding is the process of building our Framework of Understanding. Our judgment comes from this Framework of Understanding. The proximity of this Framework of Understanding to truth determine the effectiveness of our judgment.