Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.
“The beauty of imperfections” …
The 400+-year-old Japanese art of kintsugi (golden repair) or kintsukuroi (golden joinery) is a pottery repair method. It is commonly used to repair it with a precious element. It honors the artifact’s unique history by emphasizing, not hiding, the break.
The profound philosophy behind it is far greater than the artistic method itself.
When a person’s “pottery – a VASE,” something that has a specific value which is underpinned by significant importance, is damaged by reasons be known to that person, instead of hiding it or trying to fix it as if “that damage has not happened” and trying to make it as good as it was before; you choose to emphasize and acknowledge its “brokenness” rather than spending efforts to hide it or make it perfectly repaired. A “gold dust” to make it visible to honor its imperfection.
We have “precious vases” that we do our best to keep as they are. We care and do our best to protect them, yet either by our imperfections fueled up or not by our choices, fears, and beliefs, or when “life happens,” they break regardless of our efforts.
Once we face that incident and see “how it lost its shape or form due to its damage and how it is not the same anymore,” most of us believe that its value becomes lesser.
We become sorry, sad, stressed, anxious, and even depressed, and therefore we might exercise our human reflex driven by anger, resentment, shame, and blame on us and most on others.
We all have been there, right?
Whether that VASE can be anything tangible or not in your life, If you would relate to the above, I would like to invite you to ask the following questions yourself:
- What is “THAT” vase in your life?
- What is its meaning to you?
- What might be underpinning that meaning for you?
- What is your protection “strategy” for it, then? Why do you choose that strategy?
- What happened? How did it break?
- What was your role in that?
- How was your reaction when it was broken?
- What would that mean about you?
- What might ” that REMINDER element” be if you would repair it with “precious stuff “? Why is that specifically?
- Why would you choose that element?
- How much would you be willing to fix it?
- What resources would you need to fix it?
- What would you need most “to accept rather than to resist” and acknowledge its “new form” compared to its original version?
- How would that “new look” be TODAY? What would that mean to you then? What would tell about yourself NOW?
- What might you prefer about this repair “remind” you NOW?
- What might change in someone else’s life if you would share what you learned about this ” repair ” process”?
- Whom would you be willing to start to share “ your learnings from this concept “ in your life?
And the final question that matters most, as I see it, would be:
Which version of your vase would have immense value for you NOW?