Tag: kintsugi

Monday – Funday

Mondays seem to be a good day to talk about apologies for messing up. All of my horoscopes today seem to be warning me to be careful with what I say, and how I say it. (I’m a Sag – this should be a daily, flashing red light warning for me.) I saw this quote in a store the other day:

“Apologize for your mistakes, not your feelings.“

Make sure that when you apologize, you have actually done something wrong, or hurtful. You never should apologize for just being you (and that includes having and experiencing your feelings). And for when you do make mistakes, remember this:

“Go get a plate and throw it to the ground.

Did it break? Yes.

Now say sorry to it. Sorry.

Did it go back to the way it was before? No.

Do you understand now?” – Mindset for Quote

I think that this is a good reminder that apologies don’t fix everything. That being said, I think that an apology is the first step towards amends. You can either leave the plate lying on the floor, broken to pieces, or you can express your deepest apologies, and do your best to glue it back together. Will it be the same as before? No. But, if the plate is gingerly cared for, and shown that it is worth being glued back together, perhaps what comes of it, may be even more beautiful and precious than it ever was before. I wrote about this years ago, when I talked about the Japanese process of Kintsugi:

Beauty in Brokenness

Have a great week!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Beauty in Brokenness

I read a book recently that talks about the Japanese art of kintsugi.  Kintsugi is the process of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer filled with gold dust and other precious metals.   The kintsugi process has such a lovely result, that people have been accused of purposely breaking their ceramics so that these items can be repaired with the tell-tale look of the gold lines running through them, like a golden web or a yellow brick road on a map.  The Japanese often consider the repaired ceramic pieces to be even more beautiful and valuable than before, because their kintsugi shows that the pieces have a history and are worthy of being fixed.

Many people consider kintsugi to be part of the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi which means embracing the imperfect and flawed.  This passage is from The Book of Life website:

“In an age that worships youth, perfection and the new, the art of kintsugi retains a particular wisdom – as applicable to our own lives as it is to a broken tea cup. The care and love expended on the shattered pots should lend us the confidence to respect what is damaged and scarred, vulnerable and imperfect – starting with ourselves and those around us.”

Kintsugi is an excellent reminder that our scars and our hurts and our pains have lead us to a beautiful wisdom and a resilient strength.  When we reach middle age, it is nearly impossible to have not gone through some trials, many that may have brought us to our knees.  But we are still standing, and what we have gained in the process of making it through our struggles is actually a beautiful and a shining example to others on life’s journey, that it is possible to make it through the hard times and to be even more magnificent for it.  We should wear our battle scars with pride.  We should envision them as golden veins of hope and endurance.  We should embrace what is less than perfect in ourselves, and in doing so, allowing others to do the same for themselves.  Perhaps kintsugi is like a golden maze of veins in a heart, making it easy for love to flow through, even the most broken of anything.