On a recent walk I was considering the idea of things that break. How things can seemingly sustain damage or injury and it seems like such loss. However, in a healthy body the area where breaks occur grows back stronger. Often in life broken things can bring greater beauty.
One of my favorite art forms is the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi for example. This art form takes broken ceramics and repairs them with gold to make them stronger and more beautiful. Like the golden fault lines running through kintsugi, just as we or the things in our life are broken, they can be repaired through learning in that growth, discovery of new abilities, revelations of new opportunities to become stronger and more beautiful.
Kintsugi, translated literally as “golden joinery”, this beautiful concept from Japanese history is now considered an important art form, but also a metaphor for teaching us to embrace the beauty of imperfections. Kintsugi reminds us that something broken is just at a point in the journey ready for new beauty, and once repaired to be stronger at the broken places.
“The philosophy behind it goes much deeper than a simple artistic practice,” explains Celine Santini, author of Kintsugi: Finding Strength in Imperfection. “It has to do with the symbolism of healing and resilience. First taken care of and then honored, the broken object accepts its past and paradoxically becomes more robust, more beautiful and more precious than before it was broken.”
As humans, we have an innate drive to keep going and to improve from mistakes or twists in our lives. This should empower us to embrace the challenges and unpredictability that can lead us to lives of true depth and experience. However, this mindset means opening yourself up to pain and loss. So if we are to have “kintsugi lives” we have to accept the role of adversity in life. Moments of crisis — the loss of a job, a set back, etc — can, with hindsight, be powerful motivators for growth and offer new revelations and infinite possibilities.
It is significant to me that the method of repair in kintsugi is that gold is not just beautiful but a source for strength. The precious nature of the gold provides the strength, confidence and value in the reparation. And one of the most incredibly powerful elements of kintsugi is that every effort is made to celebrate the breaks and the bonds by showing the gold.
We need to embrace the “kintsugi mindset” in our lives but also celebrate it in those we meet. All of us have had breaks that have left fault lines of growth, beauty and strength for the next chapters in our lives.
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