Notes Toward a Unified Theory of the Coherent Person (Mosaic)

It struck me today that people are like mosaics. I’m sure I cannot be the first person to make this connection, but it’s a new idea for me.

A mosaic is defined (by my Oxford Dictionary) as “a picture or pattern produced by arranging small colored pieces of hard material…” and “a combination of diverse elements forming a more or less coherent whole.”

At distance, a mosaic appears as a whole or complete picture. The whole may be a geometric or abstract pattern, a landscape, or a portrait. Anything.

As you get closer, you start to notice the mosaic’s pieces. It turns out that the “picture” is composed of many smaller elements or pieces, which may differ in size, shape, color or shade, and texture. The pieces may be smooth and uniform or jagged and irregular, and the “whole” may contain uniform pieces in one area and jagged pieces in another.

Some parts may look like broken pieces or fragments and these broken fragments may appear to be leftovers from some other earlier whole object or rejects from another thing.

The closer you get, the more you learn how the picture is more diverse, detailed and complicated than it appears from a distance.

Mosaics are mounted on some kind of skeleton structure, base, or foundation. And the mosaic’s pieces are held together by a medium in which they rest and bond, forming a “more or less coherent whole.”

A “more or less coherent whole”?

I’ll take that: the more and the less.

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