Beauty in the Broken

The other day, a friend and I were speaking about the Japanese art of Kintsugi, and I couldn’t help but recognize it as a metaphor for a full life.

In Kintsugi, a broken piece of pottery is not thrown out; rather, it is repaired using liquid glue mixed with gold to fill in the cracks. Thus, the pottery is reborn with rivers of gold flowing in places where cracks once were.

The pottery is no longer broken, or useless. The broken pieces are now beautifully held together with gold, making a beautiful pattern. The pottery is more beautiful than before, and just as useful.

And so it can be with our lives. None of us will get through a full life without periods of heart-break and unfulfilled dreams. When a life-shattering event happens, we have the opportunity to pick up the pieces and find the gold with which we will glue our lives back together. Our “glue” can be found through friends, counselors, and peer support groups.

Kintsugi does not hide the flaws, rather it turns them into a thing of beauty. Our lives can be like that. We can find ways to bring meaning out of our sorrow. One way of doing this is to share our sorrows with others, and in so doing, create a safe place for others to share their sorrows with us. When we do this, we will create a thing of beauty from the broken pieces of life.