The Sum of All Parts

Jacob entered military service
where he encountered the exorcists of spirits.
Crosses and incantations were absent
and an old ritual known as Basic Training
performed the said needed exorcism.
Broken and rebuilt within his same living shell,
Jacob changed but not life’s definition.
He was still a living breathing being, alive
but different from before the trials.
Have you heard the old saying “The Sum of all Parts”?

Our little pieces of life form the whole,
Basic Training then adds to the sum of life’s parts.
Life is still life but the person has changed.
Change means to replace that, which the training removed,
its essence is the difference of all parts.
Have you heard this, “Life is a Series of Losses?”
This means we sum our losses to the whole,
arriving at the sum gives us our life’s total.
The experts tell us this process is growth,
a slow development toward maturity.

Jacob’s life now flourishes within loss,
but his life is different from what it was before.
The breakdown through life’s trials has changed him.
He that left differs from he that arrived.
The mathematical processes reveal truth.
Jacob lost he who entered the trials.
The loss is the slow development of his growth
added to the sum of maturity.
Maturity arrives from “The Sum of All Parts”,
the ever-changing parts … so who are we?

Loss presents us growths’ opportunities.
Growth is the changing of us through all the trials,
added loss is gain so we never lose.
Within this growth lays the betterment of our lives
formed from the chiseling loses we gained.
When hammer and pick are finally set aside,
appears the newly sculpted you and me. 
Who is Jacob, does he have any idea?
Does Jacob recognize the sculptor’s work?
Who will he be when the hammer chisels again?