Can there be beauty in broken things ?

There once was a powerful man in Japan, named Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, a commander in chief around 14th century. He had a fancy tea bowl imported all the way from China. One of those clumsy, off days, he dropped that ceramic bowl and it broke into pieces. He sent those pieces back to China, to get it fixed, only to be utterly disappointed at the repair. The broken pieces were joined with metal staples which made it look hideous. Then, he called all the finest craftsmen in the town and asked them to fix it. These craftsmen did something brilliantly artful. They adhered the pieces with tree sap mixed with gold. It gave the cracks an illuminating effect, highlighting the damage the bowl had been through. This later on became a popular art called "Kintsugi".

Kintsugi is an art form, where broken things are adhered with liquified gold or silver. It highlights the cracks of broken ceramics. Like a ceramic bowl, our lives too are fragile, right? No matter how carefully and calculatively, we pave our paths, lot of things could go wrong and damage is inevitable. We cannot humanly avoid falling apart atleast once in the long bumpy ride that our life is. And we need to be strong enough and smart enough to pick all our broken parts, put them together and give a stronger comeback, without hiding any of our flaws. Afterall, its these flaws, the mistakes we make and the lessons we learn are what will shape us as a person. This is what Kintsugi as an ideology is.

This infact is a part of the popular Japanese concept, Wabi-Sabi. The importance of finding balance in good and bad, light and darkness. The art of finding beauty in broken things. It is the strength that takes to embrace ourselves as we are, through all our insecurities and imperfections, that will keep us sailing through the ocean of life and reach that shore..............