Kintsugi

Beauty emerges from thoughtful healing

I went to a book event this summer with three authors whose most recent books deal squarely with “broken” individuals. Or perhaps, better to say, “deeply flawed”. I am now halfway through a memoir whose author endures terrible pain.

In each of these works, we see the wounds and flaws in each person. In ourselves, if we look closely. All of us flawed. The process of living fractures each of us in unique ways, both terrible and beautiful.

Not one of them mentions this, but in each book, I felt the authors were touching on “kintsugi”, the Japanese art of repairing broken things (generally pottery). Crucially, kintsugi philosophically emphasizes the inevitability of this as a mirroring of life itself.

In Buddhist terms, this is the First Noble Truth - life WILL break us. And we can move on from that. We are not stuck with “brokenness” if we understand it and work with it.

What I didn’t understand about Kintsugi as a practice is the core belief that the beauty of the “repaired” object surpasses the original. In life, we often look back at our missteps with regret. See our scars and want to hide them.

Kintsugi suggests that if we’ve really worked with our past, our wounds, we have the potential for a beauty that surpasses who we once were.

Some “broken vessel” reading…

Willy gives us the life of a deeply broken individual who is roused from his final slow decline by the mirage-like appearance of a blind horse outside his cabin.

Hannah’s memoir takes us from her early years on a small, remote island in the Pacific Northwest to bitter cold Toronto and finally the streets of Los Angeles. Her parents split and equally neglectful, Hannah has to find her own way. Deeply honest and often harrowing.

Thomas chronicles our sometimes-broken city, from its origins (stolen from the Duwamish peoples) through the failed dream of a Supersonic transport.

Jonathan tells the story of a long marriage that cracks and fractures, but never completely comes undone. But now faces the ultimate challenge as the couple enters their twilight years. A rom-com that becomes a rom-dram.

Jess tells the story of another broken old man, hiding from the world off the grid. In this case in eastern Washington. When his grandkids show up on his doorstep, he’s got to figure out how to be a grandparent and parent before it’s too late.