Beautifully Broken....Kintsukuroi

I am trying to remember exactly when it was that I became aware that people, not just things.....could actually "break."  In Indonesia, as a kid, I saw plenty of poor people, beggars even, that lived broken lives....most of whom made tiny homes out of broken boxes, sticks and rocks to hold down thin corrugated sheets of metal for their roofs.   I didn't know about being broken on the inside.....That was different.....My 10 year old eyes couldn't see that 'far'.

Maybe it was when I saw what a bad break up could do to someone... a boy broke my sister's heart in High School.... I didn't understand the depth of pain, but I didn't need to, I just had to watch to know what that could do.  I remember experiencing the betrayal of friendship, hurt feelings from a family member, physical and emotional scarring caused by worldly vices, crippling low self-esteem, co-dependency....the desperate clinging to the wrong kind of love and affection.....and others......

Through personal experience, I started to see people differently.  I could start to see more on the "inside" then before.  What became the most revealing, was the transition of awareness in seeing others to that of seeing my own "brokenness".... Ouch!  That was a painful realization.  How did those things come into my life? How did they sneak in there?  How did I not see it?  I remember the series of events that led me to a very profound visual of the eggshell of a foundation that I thought was so much stronger than it really was.  I remember watching the eggshell crack literally beneath my feet....I didn't know how to stop the slipping or the eventual fast paced free fall to "truth".....real truth.  There I found a mirror that I didn't know existed or ever thought I would have to look into. This was Heaven's mirror, helping me to see who I really was and to challenge what I really believed in.   I struggled with the wrong definitions the world propped up in front of me -- of love, goodness, and personal worthiness.  I placed labels and values on my brokenness.... I couldn't be worthy of love and acceptance if I had these particular broken parts could I?  They were "bad" -- so therefore, I must too, be "bad."

I didn't know exactly where to start, to put the broken pieces back.  I actually believed for longer than I should have, that I couldn't really be put back together.... or if I did, then it wouldn't be the same "product" as before... it would be "defective"... Something you would find at a discount or outlet store... second hand quality.  It was very easy for me to find comfort in that space.... I didn't have to work that hard... it was pretty easy to believe in an alternate path and just "coast" in autopilot.  No thinking, no feeling, no steering... just letting things happen to me, instead of actively engaging in moving forward and upward.  I spent a lot of time deciding to accept the broken variety of Aaron.  I was still ok..... not shattered.  But I couldn't see the way through the pieces around me.

Then there was this person..... Not sure how, but they saw through me... they didn't see the pieces, they just saw my heart, they saw what I could become, not what I was.  They didn't look back, like I liked to do, they only saw......beauty. Part of me responded to that, part of me couldn't really believe it.  No, I can't really let myself totally believe in this new golden picture of myself.  That would mean giving up all these false beliefs about what I thought I was get rid of the map that led me to an alternate destination.  I had become comfortable with my collection of hangups.....That was harder than I thought to do..... It was easier to accept the broken me than to believe I could be whole, or even better than before.

In Japan, there is an art form that puts broken pottery back through application of lacquer mixed with powdered silver, platinum or gold.  It is called Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi "golden repair." More profound, is that it's philosophy treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.  A philosophy that embraces the flaws and the imperfect.  An amazingly different perspective than most of the world would offer.  Highlighting the cracks and wear as simply an event in the life's journey of an object rather than seeing it at the "end" of it's usefulness or existence because of the damage.  Not only do they acknowledge the flaws, but they honor and value them!  As in the image above, 

the repair is actually illuminated by the gold lacquer

....what a stunningly beautiful concept.

I for one, can share with you that it is an unbelievable feeling to be lacquered with gold powder and be illuminated with hands and eyes so loving. To be good as new.....no, to be 'better than ever.'  To loosen and let go of the robe of shame and guilt and to be a new kind of shiny.  I couldn't have ever done it myself.  I needed help...I still need help.....How do I ever in this lifetime, or with words that will never convey the deep and sincere gratitude for those who see what I could not?  For those that went from seeing to piecing me back together, that never gave up, what do I say to them?  What words do I choose?  What gift can I give?

I can be my best self and I can return the favor by seeing all those around me as they can become, not just who they were yesterday and who they are today...

Learning about Kintsukuroi has done one particularly important thing.  It has heightened my awe, reverence and hope of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  The parallels are very strong and interesting.

I know all the cracks, flecks, uneven lines and damage that makes up my particular piece of pottery.  I see my gold lines with a different view these days..... .  I have been and will continue to be beautifully broken.  There is no other way....

The Days of Wine and Roses

Do you ever get hit by a wave of nostalgia that either knocks you off your feet or leaves you breathless and then afterwards find it hard to stand up straight and get your bearings as you linger in the intensity of the reverberations of a single moment of a time gone by....?  How is it the ripple affect continues on even now, much later...? How can it leave such a mark?  Did those moments really occur? Or do they seem like distant dreams now.....?

I have been completely overwhelmed by nostalgia in the past few days.... This time round I think the experience of soaking in the rays of heady halcyon days of the past has actually left a physical mark...much like the sun, overexposure for sure, maybe even a bit of  'saudade' sunstroke.... When these powerful moments come knocking on my door I welcome them in, they are friends, they feel like home.... so it is hard for me to let them know that the hour has grown late....that the time has arrived for them to leave....so that I may return to the land of the present, and somehow recover from it all. They don't leave easily... You don't really want them to leave......you both want to languish and linger and squeeze every drop out of each remaining moment....

The inevitability of tomorrow's reality check always wins out, but the mind can always soar again.....later.

How can one single photo cause such a tsunami?  The power of one image, one smell, one song, one freshly baked chocolate chip cookie, one glance.... incredible!  What emotions they can trigger, even those ones that you put away deep in the closet and locked up long ago.... Bang!! The doors fly wide open and there you are....all over again.  You watch the movie again, for the 1,000th time, and it never gets old.  It reminds you that you did live, that you did love, that you did matter, that you did contribute somehow, some way to someone else's experience and life.....after all.

Those moments where the bliss is so exquisite, the pain so engulfing..... the meaning so deep. Add them all up....and maybe you hold 5 or 6 seconds worth in your hands, compared to your whole life's clock, but they are the few 'seconds' that were the most revered, most loved, most magical, the one's that almost give your entire life it's earthly meaning.  Fleeting, yet full....yes, very filling...to the brim.
These moments are part of what one poet captured with this beautiful phrase:  "The Days of Wine and Roses"

There is something that happens inside me when I read this poem, especially the second paragraph. There is a contented melancholy that haunts me.  The words are not depressing to me, nor are they by any means overly positive either.  They just.... are.  They depict well, at least for me, how I think about those particular days... simple, beautiful and brief... as they should be, but big enough to swallow me whole every single time.

                                                                                                                                                                               They are Not Long

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate;

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

   

They are not long, the days of wine and roses,

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

                                         Ernest Dowson                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  What I love is that I relate to the poem.  I am a dreamer, I take emotional journeys often, but I can relish the fact that my worst days of hate won't be long, neither are the Icarus-like soaring moments of bliss either....Even James wrote this in the New Testament: 

"Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."  James 4:14