day eight - broken
I’ve often quipped that I’m broken. Be it the result of one of my infamous physical injuries (sometimes playing up as some strange biological weather predictor), or as a rarely verbalised manifestation of my mental illness. It was fine to joke about, but when it felt like my reality, there was a risk of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One time a friend took exception to me calling myself broken, and gave me a new perspective which took a long time to accept, but ultimately helped a lot.
“You’re like a dish repaired with kintsugi.
You’re not broken. You’ve had your smashes, like we all have, but you’ve repaired yourself.
Your history is what made you who you are. It’s left its patterns on you but it doesn’t define you...
like a landscape with all the signs of the life you’ve lived and that’s lived in you”
Knitsugi (literally golden repair) is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold. It teaches that broken objects are not something to be hidden away, but lovingly repaired and displayed with pride.
“The kintsugi technique suggests many things. We shouldn’t throw away broken objects. When an object breaks, it doesn’t mean that it is no more useful. Its breakages can become valuable.
We should try to repair things because sometimes in doing so we obtain more valuable objects. This is the essence of resilience.
Each of us should look for a way to cope with traumatic events in a positive way, learn from negative experiences, take the best from them and convince ourselves that exactly these experiences make each person unique, precious.” - Stefano Carnazzi
Kilt of the Day - Black Watch Tartan
Link of the day - Knitsugi : The Art of Precious Scars
