Kintsugi

On Thursday evening I did a Kintsugi workshop…

The ancient art of mending broken ceramics with the “golden seal”, embracing the imperfections in life and celebrating what was once there and has now been fixed. The visible repairs are seen as part of the history of the object, highlighting the cracks and symbolising fragility, strength and beauty.

“Kin” means gold , “Tsugi” repair. As the ceramic pieces are susceptible to knocks over time so are we as humans.. the philosophy of Kintsugi encourages you to embrace your emotional scars and make them beautiful letting your scars remind you that you are strong and resilient.

I had heard before about the broken parts becoming the most valuable as the broken parts are joined together with liquid gold but what I hadn’t appreciated until I had a go is the patience necessary! It was a relatively easy process… a case of mixing some gorilla glue with a couple of drops of liquid gold tint and you only had to hold the pieces together for 4 minutes for them to set but that seemed like a long time! Imagine how long the original craftsmen had to hold it together when they were working with liquid gold!

I’ve started to read Michelle Obama’s latest book The Light We Carry and she talks about the importance of taking time to complete one small thing when we get overwhelmed. Just start one thing and finish it. However small that one thing may be..

“We need to remember to keep laying the small alongside the big… small endeavours help to guard our happiness, to keep it from getting consumed by all that’s big”.

She urges us to “claim a small victory… find one thing that you can actively complete and give yourself over to it… allow yourself the gift of absorption”. For Michelle Obama it’s knitting, for me it’s painting. What small victory can you claim today?