Is broken better than new?

On one hand…

The story goes that a 15^th century Japanese shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, sent a broken tea bowl to China to have it fixed. When the bowl came back, it was held together with metal staples.

Disgusted, he set out to find a better, more aesthetically pleasing way to repair broken pottery.

His eventual solution? Adding gold dust to adhesive resin, so that the cracks are emphasized and made attractive. Now the Japanese art of Kintsugi makes beautiful the cracked or broken places.

Instead of making it “good as new” the result is “better than new”, a conspicuous, artful repair that actually adds value.

The mender has viewed the break as a place for healing and demonstrated love by finding the pieces and carefully soldering them together. This gives the mender a deeper understanding of the bowl’s strength, beauty and purpose.

from
http://lakesidepottery.com/Pages/kintsugi-repairing-ceramic-with-gold-and-lacquer-better-than-new.htm

So… 

As a metaphor for our lives, it shows respect for lessons given and learned, rather than throwing away the broken bowl (or ourselves).

The relationship we have with others, and with ourselves is like fine glass, it is very fragile. When a relationship doesn’t look or work exactly the way we think it should, we often give up and walk away.

All relationships are fragile and will eventually break. How we pick up the pieces, repair the damage, and heal the relationship is the story of our life. 

We will experience many breaks over our lifetime. Disappointment, goals not reached, lost pride and disillusionment can leave us in pieces.

When we don’t run away, but stay and pick up the pieces, we tell the universe that we are not to be thrown away. Repairing what is broken is an act of love and compassion.

When we view what we once called scars as the evidence of a lesson learned, scars become lifelines of healing.

One the other hand…

Maybe there’s value in being “broken.”

There’s a familiar fable of a water bearer who had two large pots, each hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house. The cracked pot was ashamed that it was only able to accomplish half of what it had been made to do.

The cracked pot apologized to the bearer for his flaw that allowed water to leak out all the way back to the house.

The water bearer told the pot to notice the beautiful flowers along the side of the path which were only on the side of the path that the cracked pot had, unaware, watered on each trip. The bearer had used the flaw in the pot to water the flowers that the master was then able to enjoy.

As the poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen said,

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

 

Or perhaps it not only gets in to bless the pot), but also pours out (to bless others)!

So if you’re called a crack pot, take it as a complement!

And feel free to share your thoughts on all this!

Tags: broken, cracked pot, fable, gold repairs, Kintsugi, Leonard Cohen