Have you heard of Kintsugi?
This is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum powder. Instead of disguising the cracks, Kintsugi highlights and enhances them. A new, more beautiful piece of pottery with a unique history is created.
An element of my photography documents the flaws – I love taking pictures of weeds growing in sidewalk cracks.
Celebrating an annoying weed growing in the “flaw” of the sidewalk brings me pleasure.
Like the bowl and sidewalk cracks, our lives are full of challenges, setbacks, and struggles.
We can learn from Kintsugi to embrace our scars and setbacks to create something beautiful.
Lessons from Kintsugi
Don’t Give Up: The foundational principle of Kintsugi is to honor and value something that appears broken. With this philosophy, we shouldn’t give up just because of a setback. Kintsugi believes that something that is broken is rarely completely irreparable.
Embrace Imperfections: Just as Kintsugi doesn’t hide the cracks in the pottery, we shouldn’t hide our flaws and mistakes. Instead, accept them as part of who we are and use them as opportunities for growth and learning.
Find Strength in the Cracks: Kintsugi takes the cracks than might be seen as a defect to be hidden and highlights them making them a strength of the piece. Similarly, we can take our flaws and turn them into our strengths. Highlight what makes us unique.
See Setbacks as Opportunities: Kintsugi doesn’t try to erase the cracks in the pottery. Instead, it uses them as a starting point for something new. We can use our setbacks and failures as opportunities to grow, learn, and create something better.
My Story
Most of my life I believe I’ve focused on covering up the flaws vs. celebrating them.
In the last several years, I’ve worked on shifting this.
One of the insights that helped me along the journey was realizing that many times my strengths working in overdrive showed up as weaknesses. Knowing that the qualities that make me unique can be both a strength and a weakness made the weakness side easier to embrace and celebrate.
Learning from failures is a skill that continues to be developed.
I like the idea of starting to look at the beauty within each and how I can learn and grow from the experience.
Your Turn
Does thinking about Kintsugi make you think differently about your own struggles?
How could you embrace your imperfections?
What cracks might be your unique strengths?