Kintsugi

I don’t think we are meant to live in an illusion of which our hearts are faultlessly whole and unbroken. We are indeed, perfectly whole, as beings, based on our innate...

There is a Japanese art form called, Kintsugi, it literally means “joining with gold”, and involves the repair of broken pottery by using gold, silver or platinum varnish so that the broken pieces are highlighted as a part of the history. Rather than concealing the broken bits, they are emphasized as art, through the process of healing.

I think we are like that. I don’t think we are meant to live in an illusion of which our hearts are faultlessly whole and unbroken. We are indeed, perfectly whole, as beings, based on our innate existence. It is how and why we are naturally worthy, just because we exist.

Yet, we must not live in the false reality in which we come across like we have never been broken. Let our hearts be the wild open creations of artwork that they are – bruised, broken, shattered and healed back together with something much more brilliant than illusive desire for flawlessness.

Our hearts are art work, as in we have worked hard to create their unique veins of golden glue, and where pain still thumps from time to time we’ll find platinum stiches that hold us together. Where there was once an unbroken flesh of naive curiosity now lives bandages of silver. Sterling shines across the places handprints have become permanent anchors, holding us together on the days we thought we might not make it. The pain pulling us to our knees.

But just as the potter must not throw out the pieces, we will not throw away our hearts because of pain. And that is why we bend, and how we find the courage to pick up the golden gun of glue, and put ourselves back together, imperfectly and whole. We will not conceal our history of grief. But rather we will embody and celebrate all that is imperfect, impermeant and undone. All that has unraveled within the heart, can come back together; never the same as it was. But always “joined with gold” and stronger than ever.