Where is the rest?

A 60-year-old client came in a couple of days ago, scratching at an idea shared with her by a friend. "So maybe we're all just tiny fragments of a larger Something," she said, floating the idea aloud. "We live out our little life, but that life is a mere drop in an endless Ocean." I thought I heard capital letters.

She had my full attention. I love conversations like this. What's it all about? What might this Ocean be? What would it mean for her to be "a mere drop"? I was ready to go wherever she needed to go in this conversation. I nestled into my chair.

 "So if I am just a drop bobbing along as part of a larger whole," she said, with some heaviness, "where's the rest?"

I ran with the ball, unaware that I had picked up the wrong one. For a minute or two, I waxed existential, wondering aloud about where we find the Rest of the Whole. Are there times when you feel connected to the Rest? I asked. Might there be some comfort in being a tiny fragment of a larger something? Can fragments be whole, too?

In my mind I am coming up with the best deep questions for this person: How do we figure out what we are meant to do with our piece of an infinite puzzle? When do you experience comfort in knowing that the rest exists, even though you can't see it?

She looked at me quizzically when I finally stopped talking and set the ball down, panting and bright-eyed, as I can get when sessions get existential. "No," she corrected me with a little pinch of her lips, the mouth's version of rolling its eyes. "I mean, where is the rest? When can I just rest?"

Oh. Rest. That's what I was hoping to offer you. Jeez, paula, I tell myself: Shut your larger something of a hole, and listen.