How to take life’s challenges and turn them into gold
Key points
The ancient art of Kintsugi treats breakages in items as part of their history to be valued.
It uses lacquer and gold to fill the cracks and make them more beautiful.
Kintsugi is a wonderful metaphor for life.
Hanging on to losses or disappointments versus accepting them.
Treating the disappointments or ravages of life as something to be valued can bring peace and reassurance to us and others.
Since cracks and breakages in life are normal, treating them as valuable lessons can lead to wisdom.
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Image credit: Unknown
Kintsugi, also known as Kintsukuroi, is both a philosophy and an artistic endeavor.
As a philosophy, it promotes the idea that breakages and brokenness in objects aren't something to be thrown out or even disguised. Instead, they're part of the life and history of an object, something that's a normal outcome of time and use.
The art is to repair the cracks and mend the broken pieces not with superglue but with urushi lacquer that is dusted with or has mixed into it some fine powdered gold, silver, or platinum.
I find that a wonderful, fascinating idea.
The object now has its wear and tear recorded as part of its ongoing existence and it's done in a way that doesn't try to hide the imperfections but seeks to highlight them. With gold, no less! The 'mistakes' and ravages of time are embraced as features that actually make the object unique and, therefore, even more treasured than before.
As master restorer, Hiroki Kiyokawa from Kyoto says, "The fractured part where Kintsugi is applied becomes a new landscape in itself."
That’s a Very Powerful Idea. Let me state that again:
The fractured part where Kintsugi is applied becomes a new landscape in itself.
To many people, Kintsugi is a powerful metaphor for life
For a start, we usually grow up aiming in life, or at least hoping, for wholeness and perfection even if we don't admit it. It's probably an underlying, subconscious goal or expectation. We hope to have perfect families, perfect careers, perfect health, perfect marriages and perfect financial situations.
You know, like the ones that are advertised to us ad nauseam, day in and day out.
Then, when things happen - cos things will ALWAYS happen - we feel let down, angry, hurt or very disappointed. Sometimes, it seems like parts of us crack.
It might be a job where, despite your 110% efforts and commitment over many years, you're one day unceremoniously made redundant.
It could be a marriage that, despite you wanting it to be a loving and long-term fulfilling experience for both of you, simply breaks one day.
Maybe a business fails, possibly because your partner ripped you off.
Perhaps a friend unfairly dumps you.
You get bloody cancer.
Or, something you once absolutely believed in becomes alien to you and the silence you experience from others is like a huge punch to the gut.
While these experiences may seem to kill off part of us that was once alive with hope and expectation, at the very least they scar us.
Pain notwithstanding (that too is very normal) we have two main options for how to proceed.
Firstly, after a period of grieving, we can hang on to the unfairness of it all. We revisit the 'what-ifs.' We hold on to the residual anger. We live, talk and walk around like freshly wounded people. Somehow, we have let the brokenness define us as less than.
Or, secondly, after grieving, we can embrace the cracks and breaks as something that is a very normal part of being alive. See them as the shadow side of being able to move, love, serve and create.
We cannot say that we are open to the possibilities of what life brings unless we are willing to take whatever comes. Even those things that are unexpected, unfair and costly.
We cannot say that we are open to the possibilities of what life brings unless we are willing to take whatever comes
Image credit: Unknown
Here’s the good news
Like Kintsugi, if we can treat our cracks and breakages as something not to be resisted and regretted, but something to be accepted and learned from, then we can turn them into gold.
That gold becomes not only a part of our life from then on, but a feature of our life. If we wish it to, it can:
inform how we approach life more realistically
help us grow more wise, for wisdom grows from embraced experience
enable us to offer commonality and support to others when they too are battered, bruised and broken.
Now, that's truly valuable, don’t you think?
Over to you
What parts of your life or self do you feel are cracked or broken?
What is a possible upside of this, in each case?
And what does that upside enable you to do?
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