Lessons Learned from Kintsugi
An object is made more beautiful for its flaws- in a way that no one else can replicate or recreate.
But it would be ignorant to pretend it is not weaker along those flaws, and you must take care to not stress the fault lines. (Or, at the very least, you should, if you’re working with a silicone moldable glue that is definitely not as strong as the original ceramic.)
It is futile to pretend that the pieces will fit back together perfectly, that you’ll be left with a perfect recreation with new gold on top. There will be holes where pieces turned to dust, and compromises will have to be made between which lines can match up perfectly and which ones will have to be held askew and smoothed over, gaps filled.
You will have to choose if you’re okay with the holes, or if you’ll try to fill them and gild them. Are the holes to let the light shine through? Or are they a symbol of incompleteness? How small of a piece are you willing to carefully place? Can you even see where it originally went?
There is an order to these things, so you’ll have to plan which pieces have to go together first, and then realize doing that makes the new, larger piece not fit anymore. So you’ll have to go back and undo what you did, break it in two again, and put them back together in the context of the whole.
You may drop a piece in this process, shattering it further, and you may silently curse yourself and the extra work you’ve created, while you externally wax poetic about how it’s just all part of the story, part of the journey, that led you to the finished piece.
Ikea will replace your broken object, but you will have to bring it with you and give it back. So you may as well pretend the enjoyment you got out of putting it back together was worth what you paid for the original that you expected to stay whole, and just keep it instead. You may as well pretend this was even better than what you planned for.
An human is made more beautiful for its flaws- in a way that no one else can replicate or recreate.
