Japanese Kintsugi and 11 Reasons Why You Aren’t Broken. Just Perfectly Unique

Learn how to put the pieces back together

When did you last balance check your personal time-savings account?

I checked mine and I hadn’t stored any time at all. Which was a little disappointing, seeing as I thought I’d downloaded most of the Life Apps. There may be no spare time in my account, but did I invest well instead?

Also no.

What I did do was fill my days with the desire to save time. That’s different from actual time-saving. Then I’d rinse and repeat. An endless cycle of baking in busyness and calling it a productive life. There is an empty comfort from that, but at a cost.

You’ve become conditioned to accept that time-saving means higher productivity. Higher productivity leads to better results. Better results to the life you crave. All the best gurus will tell you that. But that might not be the only conditioning taking place.

You’ve also been teaching yourself to become ruthless in your desire to cast away broken things. To elevate higher productivity that’ll lead to your best life.

You’ve conditioned yourself to throw out what doesn’t work and replace it with what does. Is your phone no good? Is the laptop too slow? Out they go.

What happens if you are broken? Do you throw yourself out?

The Japanese art of Kintsugi can teach you more than fixing broken pottery. The principles can transform your inner life.

1. Kintsugi means bonding together broken parts of pottery to leave a stronger joint. Sometimes the joined parts make a stronger bond than the original, like a broken bone that grows stronger where the break was. What was weak once is now stronger than the original.
2. There are different types of joints. Not all are suitable for the same fix. Some joints merely bond together and highlight the stronger bond. Some joints need more bonding because of what was lost. Other joints weld different pieces from unrelated pottery together. A new piece is created. A more interesting piece.
3. You value things differently. What was valueless before takes on new significance. Imagine being a druggie so down and out once only to become reformed and useful in your community to the point of great value. Imagine being Paul Hannaford. You stand up proudly and tell the world who you are despite the cracks and imperfections. You become valued and appreciated even by those that you thought you had wronged. You are taken aback by the warmth that people have for you even though you once upset and hurt them.
4. You begin to learn about the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi and how you change how you see and understand beauty and perfection. Maybe you begin to detach from a materialistic worldview and embrace a different perspective.
5. You see the world through a new sense of awe and appreciate the natural gifts that nature brings. You surprise yourself that you had forgotten to remember.
6. A childlike sense of wonderment begins to infect your thoughts and how you greet each day.
7. Your mind begins to play with the idea that it can be free from fear or anger. Your ego subsides. You stop making life fit your preconceived ideas, and step forward and embrace the changes that the moment brings.
8. You aren’t broken broken, just slightly out of alignment broken. A nudge here and a push there. You’re good to go again.
9. You see how people chase a dream. A vagueness that has no end. A circle on a treadmill that never ends or rests. You step off that road and rest under the shade of a tree. The vague chasing of a mirage is no longer for you.
10. It's ok to cry. Sometimes alone. Sometimes in the dark. We are allowed to feel sad for the journey we forgot to take when we were distracted by ourselves.
11. You aren’t broken at all. You only carry the lines where you were made stronger.