I lived in Japan as a child, and while I wasn’t there long enough to permanently pick up the language, I thought I’d wander over there, linguistically speaking, this week.
Kintsugi is something some of you may have heard of -- the art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. It’s taking something shattered, broken, seemingly irreparable, and making it whole once more, even if not in the same way it originally was. It’s accepting that the item is changed by it, not quite the same as it was before, but worth saving through that transformation. It is also a philosophical term, encouraging us to treat imperfections and flaws as part of the history of an object, rather than something to cover up.
You could also extend that to people. We’re all a little broken, I think. This world isn’t always a kind one. We’ve all felt grief and pain, we’ve all struggled and fallen.
But we can fill in the proverbial cracks with lacquer -- or something stronger. With faith, with love. On a practical level, with vaccines, when our immune systems need help. With therapy, when our minds do.
Our flaws are a part of us -- ignoring them does no good. And admitting that we’re broken, that we need help, is sometimes the absolute strongest thing we can do.
