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The Art of Kintsugi

I CAME TO THE Japanese art of Kintsugi completely by chance after accidentally knocking over, and smashing, a little pot that, despite having little or no intrinsic value, my partner loved. I was readying myself for a tongue lashing, but they were very understanding. So rather than throwing away the broken pieces of this little pot, they bought some special glue, which dries as a bright, gold colour, and cobbled it back together. And, to my mind, the repaired pot is even better than the original.

Zen Buddhism teaches that we should not seek to hide our flaws or imperfections. They are part of our history and part of us. Seeking to hide from them would be to deny part of ourself. Following that philosophy, Kintsugi celebrates the cracks and breaks in a repaired object by drawing attention to those very imperfections and fissures as an integral part of the new whole.

However broken or damaged something, or someone, is they can be repaired and the reconstructed version is no worse than the original – in fact, it might even be better than what went before. It may be a new-and-improved version of an object... or, indeed, of the self.

In fact, denying any part of our personal experience, whether good or bad, is detrimental to our overall wellbeing and, in some ways, celebrating our imperfections and 'battle scars' is a way to a more authentic self, and just possibly where the gold is hidden.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by repairing the damaged pieces with gold lacquer. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to hide or disguise. 
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