Like pieces of shattered pottery, we are all connected

When the Japanese mend broken objects, 

they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold.

They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history, 

it becomes all the more beautiful.

                                                                                                                  Billie Mobayed

When something appears to be broken what do you do? Do you throw it away and replace it with something new? Or do you try to mend it together to form something different and beautiful?

This is the underlying philosophy behind the Japanese pottery art of kintsugi. Instead of throwing away the broken pieces of a shattered jar or vase, the pieces are mended back together with gold lacquer.

In Japanese philosophy there exists the idea of “wabi-sabi,” the act of embracing the flawed or the imperfect.   When kintsugi is used to mend together broken pottery, the cracks are highlighted, rather than hidden.

Imperfection is simply part of being, and perfection is all about embracing our imperfection as we strive to naturally better ourselves. Just as Kintsugi highlights the cracks in a piece of pottery, rather than hiding them, we should look at ourselves and the world at large and consider what we really want for the future.