Sometimes, I stumble across a concept that’s so beautiful it moves me to tears.

I can’t quite remember how or when I found this particular concept initially…

But let me try!

A few years back, I learned more about embracing acceptance (thanks Jodi) while looking for some philosophies to help me process my own life.

A year later, I made a “nerd confession” that I had never seen a single Studio Ghibli movie:

So I decided to watch every film and documentary (my favorite is Whisper of the Heart).

I continued down these two paths until they combined into a new curiosity with Japanese Zen Buddhism…

Not because I thought it would solve all of my problems or because I wanted to make it my entire identity.

But simply because the more I read, the more beauty I found. 

I’ve written in the past about the concept of Wabi-sabi, a Japanese Zen art and life philosophy that tries to convey the serene melancholy of life being: 

• Impermanent: nothing lasts forever.
• Incomplete: everything is always changing.
• Imperfect: there is no such thing as perfection.

Accepting these three truths is actually what gives life (and art) their meaning.

Broken Pottery is Beautiful (the art of Kintsugi)

Imagine you purchased a lovely and expensive looking bowl at a neighborhood thrift shop.

You put it in the middle of your coffee table, and it makes you happy every time you look at it.

But then your cat named Ralph Meowchio, wearing Kitten Mittens (™), knocks the bowl off the table and breaks it into four pieces:

Your first inclination might be to swear at Ralph (poor Ralph).

Your next inclination would be to grab some clear superglue and try to glue that bowl back together as perfectly as possible, so that you couldn’t tell it had ever been broken.

Well, if you happened to be a 16th century Japanese artisan, you might employ a different strategy:

Kintsugi, which translates to “golden joinery.”

You would mix together gold flecks (or silver, or platinum) and glue to put the bowl back together, like this:

Rather than hide the flaws of the bowl, the goal is the exact opposite:

You want to DRAW ATTENTION to the cracks. 

Those cracks are what separates that bowl from every other identical bowl. 

For the rest of time, every time you look at your gold-lined bowl, or a friend asks about it, you can tell the tale of Ralph Meowchio knocking it off the table, and you will smile.

(Comically, Kintsugi started to become so popular that artisans would break their own pots on purpose to make them more valuable).

We are all (really good looking) Broken Bowls.

You might be thinking, “Steve is this where you teach me a life lesson about broken pots?”

We spend a LOT of time thinking about how to hide our flaws. 

The wellness and beauty industry will gladly point out our flaws to then sell us the solution to cover up our scars and our wrinkles, lose our “baby weight,” etc.

We then do whatever we can to stop time, to bury our imperfections, to keep our failures hidden.

This is the opposite of acceptance.

This is the opposite of Wabi Sabi.

There’s unique, impermanent beauty to be found in in our flaws, cracks, failures, and mistakes:

Those things show we made it out of the cabinet and got put to good use!

Those things show we are well-loved and well-worn.

Those things show we’ve lived a life.

Sure, we can use clear superglow and desperately hope to “put the bowl back together perfectly.”

But that’s boring.

Instead, we can change the narrative around that mistake. 

We can mix some glue with some gold, silver, or platinum, and turn that “flaw” into a story to be told. Maybe it becomes part of a new story or tradition. Maybe it becomes a lesson to teach your kids on acceptance or forgiveness

To you, my fellow broken bowl:

Is there something from your past, a failure or experience that you’ve tried to hide instead of embracing?

What color are you going to use to fill in that crack, failure, or scar? What’s the new story you can apply to this past setback or screw-up? The story we tell ourselves is unbelievably powerful.

Hell, you might be in the “recently failed, currently broken, but not glued back together” part. Broken doesn’t mean “throw me away.” Broken is simply the next step towards becoming something unique and special.

Instead of trying to get back to “unbroken,” we’re simply becoming something different.

Something that could have MORE value because it’s been used and loved and experienced.

-Steve (fellow broken bowl)