Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with gold or silver. It treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to hide or cause the object to be discarded. The repaired piece becomes unique and different from all others of its kind. Is it just me or can you see the applicability of this principle to people? No? Wait for it…
If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces – Shane Koyczan
Just imagine if we treated our brokenness and ugly past as the part of our journey that makes us unique and one-of-a-kind? What if instead of spending valuable time and energy regretting our past poor decisions, we treated them as the valuable parts of our history that helped shape us into this unique ever changing and evolving being? Just think about how many negative feelings such as stress, self-loathing, low self-esteem, depression, etc. we could reduce and even eliminate with this mindset shift.
I know many times my girlfriends and I speak of relationships and talk about past hurts. One day one of my wise girlfriends said, she was at a point in her life where she finally understood that she was broken and needed to seek ways of healing that brokenness in an effort to move forward. I remember getting a little misty eyed because that resonated with me; with where I was in personal relationships. At that time I was in a long-term relationship that was healthy and but I didn’t know how to leave. Can you imagine that if only I had understood that part of my inability to leave was tied to feelings that my brokenness could only be managed, contained, hidden with him in my life, I would have been moving towards healing the brokenness sooner.
I don’t know about you but being able to see myself as whole; see myself as not being simply held together by a person or a thing, but rather being strengthened with gold and beauty where there used to be pain, hurt, and negativity, brings me peace. It allows me to make decisions without being paralyzed by the fear of failure or the “what ifs’. What if you embraced life knowing that the bad times and the poor decisions will ultimately create a thing of beauty? Challenge yourself to see yourself as a unique art piece that will only get more beautiful as you live and experience life… fully.
The final word… we can allow our experiences to create negativity and brokenness or we can allow them to create strength and beauty; choose beauty every time.