Nowadays, many people we know are hurting. Hurting deeply inside.
My wife has lately been following a pair of siblings who have lost both parents to Covid-19, one after the other. One particular sibling has been ranting in post after post on social media, flailing wildly against the health system, hospital people, even against relatives. She is angry and inconsolable. But her postings are revealing other cracks in the family that have been long hidden beneath the surface.
There is a colleague who has just been compelled to close his small business, which, even before the pandemic, was barely surviving. He was about to get fresh capital infusion from an interested investor when the lockdown came. It was a painful decision because the said company was his steady source of income, joy and meaning. His wife died three years ago. Now in his late 60s, without kids, isolated from his wife’s relatives, he is living alone, renting an apartment. With no steady income, he is drawing on his savings and insurance benefits, which are being depleted by monthly rentals and car amortizations. He strives to appear unaffected but I can detect small cracks in the façade.
There’s a distant branch in our family where sisters in their 70s are not talking to each other. They take turns contacting my wife who serves as a listening device to their bitter fulminations against each other. The crack that divided them started many years ago, and they have allowed it to widen through the years. Now older and supposed to be wiser, they face a crevice that might now be beyond repair.
There are many more such cracks and brokenness in people’s lives, including our own lives for sure.
But let’s take heart from what the writer Ernest Hemingway said: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”
As I was feeling heavy with all the sad developments happening around us, I had a little epiphany one morning after watching a fascinating NHK documentary on a Japanese art that somehow captures the essence of what we all need right now. It’s called “kintsugi.” It is the art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with liquid gold or lacquer dusted with powdered gold. The idea behind it is that you can create a stronger, more beautiful piece of art by embracing flaws and imperfections, by highlighting rather than hiding the scars.
I am trying to look for an equivalent value in our culture. Pagkumpuni? Pagbuo muli? Paghilom? Somehow they don’t quite come close to the deeper meaning of kintsugi.
What should one take away from kintsugi?
First is that we need to hold a sense of reverence for objects that we have used or that have long served us. Because they have been part of our lives, let’s give them respect for their history and express our thanks as we discard or give them away.
When we sold our old car, which served us for more than 20 years, my main object was not to get the best price. There were at least three who were interested. But I chose a young mechanic who had been saving money to buy his own car. I sensed that he would value and take care of the car as we did and even give it new life. Choosing the right person to be the new owner was the least we could do to express our gratitude to that faithful servant of a car, which had many stories to tell about our family if it could talk. We were not disappointed. Today, that car runs efficiently on a superbly tuned up engine, and is pampered with loving care by its new owner.
Kintsugi tells us that before throwing them away, perhaps we can look at old objects again and discover new uses for them. This is why I was delighted to see a row of plastic soft drink bottles cut into halves to serve as pots for plants now hanging on a wall of a barangay. What an ingenious and delightful way to give new uses for discarded objects.
Many years ago, we owned an old dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle. It became so rusty and rickety that we sold it almost for a song. The buyer was not interested in restoring the body but in the engine. Later we learned that the engine was installed onto a boat and I imagine that it is now powering a fishing vessel somewhere in Laguna Lake.
But there’s a more profound message I discerned from that documentary. More than just an art, kintsugi is a spiritual concept that is meant to teach us to embrace and celebrate authenticity and imperfections and living simply.
The key point I discerned from kintsugi is not to hide away the cracks but to actually highlight the “cracks” or “scars” as part of the design.
As one serious student of this art puts it: “Kintsugi shows you that you are better with your golden cracks.”
The golden scars are actually a tribute to you. So what if you have been damaged or broken once? But that is what enriches you as a person. An imperfect work in progress!
So let’s not hide away the scars, but embrace the imperfections as being part of who we are.
This brings me to our next-door neighbor. The family used to be snobbish and not shy about flaunting their newfound wealth. But when their unmarried son produced a grandchild who was diagnosed to be afflicted with a kind of muscular dystrophy, life took an unexpected turn for them. They have become more vulnerable. But we can all see how much they love this “special child.” They don’t hide him away; on the contrary, they take pride in showing him in our neighborhood and on their social media postings. Clearly, they have embraced his imperfection. In turn, the child may have transformed them a little bit. They seem to have toned down their flaunting and are more neighborly as well as respectful of other parents with children.
I pray that, broken as we are, we will be guided towards a place where we can go beyond today’s pain to create a new story for our life and become a source of strength for others.
Above all, I devoutly wish that our fractured nation will be imbued with the spirit of kintsugi. Let our shared history and collective aspirations become the golden lacquer to repair our brokenness and close the gaps in the many cracks that continuously divide and keep us apart. Then out of our mended brokenness, let us emerge as one community that is more beautiful, resilient and stronger.