kintsugi

We’re all damaged, you and I. No matter how sheltered or unkind fate has been with you; we all have missing pieces, minute cracks and fissures that pepper our self. You might be unaware of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. The broken shards, held together by the social graces; the composed demeanor masking the silent screams, that awkward laughter that hides the anxious fumbling. We can’t be alive, and not be broken. But being broken isn’t the problem. Humanity’s injured consciousness is the price we pay for free will. Because free will precludes conflict and contradiction; we cannot be free without affording the same liberty to others. So you learn, along the way that being free means being disappointed.

It’s not being jaded, or cynical. It’s a simple statement of fact. However, the silver lining is that we still have a choice how we react to things, or people, or situations. We can’t always have what we want, nor can we influence what others feel or think, or do. But we can choose how we react to it, to them, the absurdness of the situation, and to the disappointment of fault.

We’re human. We make mistakes. Sometimes amends are made, to appease, and even to please. But this is a luxury rarely given. Maybe there’s poetic justice in being damaged. How our imperfections become the distinction that sets us apart. That gives texture to an otherwise humdrum existence. Maybe being broken isn’t so bad after all. That missing those parts were meant to give you purpose. So you can exist for something, or at least be cognizant that there is fault in being free, as much as it is an open invitation to possibility.

Experience teaches us that we are capable of as much pain, as we are of happiness. That we can inflict, both generous love and undiscerning indiscretion, as much as we can bear them. Emotions are there to be felt. We can’t always sweep things under the rug, and deny our capacity to feel. As high as we put up our walls, to conceal or to obscure, beneath we’ll always be vulnerable.

There is comfort in being vulnerable.

Original image from here.

Kintsugi (金継ぎ?) (Japanese: golden joinery) or Kintsukuroi (金繕い?) (Japanese: golden repair) is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold.