Good Ol' Humpty Dumpty

I read somewhere that Humpty Dumpty could be considered a paradigm of our times: a fragmented whole whose only hope of being put back together rests in the hands of those who know nothing of the whole, but only the fragments. Is it true? And how true is it? Have we ever been whole, or is each whole only a piece of a bigger whole? So, what is the biggest whole? And what causes it to break?

When I was little, I had a stuffed Humpty Dumpty and I remember feeling confused and perhaps even disappointed that he would never break if he fell off a wall; he was too gosh-darned fluffy. Either someone in the design department of some toy store somewhere forgot the eggman’s fate, or (more than likely) a decision had to be made regarding at which point in the story to represent Mr. Dumpty: at the beginning when he is one piece, or at the end when he is many. Hmmm...Tough decision. No doubt that oodles of toy companies decided to give Humpty Dumpty’s tragic ending form and oodles more found ways of fashioning a toy that could come apart and be put back together. But not the maker of my friend. My friend was whole. He was one piece, and barring an overly attached child or acid rain, my companion was intended to be whole as long as I would have the pleasure of knowing him, regardless of the fact that I know how the story ends.

I don’t know where my stuffed Humpty Dumpty is, but here I am pretending to be whole, knowing that I’m going to end up in pieces, and feeling crazy as I fall apart. The king’s men are no help; they only know the pieces and have yet to accept the Law of Entropy. What is the whole if it's not the pieces anyway? And if all the pieces fall to pieces, does that mean each piece becomes a whole? A pie's a pie no matter how you slice it. Perhaps what I consider the whole pie depends on when I arrive at the party.