6th October 2023 Shobha and Beena
Hello guys😊😊. Today, I am excited to post a creative work by my good friend, Shobha. She loves to repair anything that is broken. As you can see from that post, she had fixed a jug back to its beautiful old self; I would add, even better than before.
That made me think🤔🤔. We live a life trying to have perfection, from our looks, education, and behaviour, and the list is endless😱. Many of us find it hard to pick the pieces up once broken. Nevertheless, for the Japanese, they have this technique called Kintsugi. They repair broken ceramics with urushi lacquer mixed with powdered gold.
Shobha used this technique for many decades. I wonder if she knew this was a Japanese technique🤨. She found peace mending a broken pot. If we are to reflect on our lives, when we help others to restore their disrupted lives, we see a certain kind of joy when they are happy. We are using this method of healing others, even though we don’t use gold powder. But the glow in their eyes is that gold powder🫠🫠.
Shobha’s philosophy is that an unbroken life is not a life lived to the fullest💃🏽💃🏽. They should realise that there is hope in living an imperfect life. For those who believe life must be perfect, being cautious is tough 😞😞. I hope you found joy in Shobha’s jug and her philosophy😂😂😂.
8 thoughts on “Kintsugi”
I found out about the Japanese technique and philosophy only a while ago. As you mention they use gold in the cracks ; your friend doesn’t and I feel that perhaps it makes her jug even more beautiful and “relatable” somehow. I ❣️it. I hope she will read this 😉
Very TRUE… you are the gold
I am tempted to pick on the word imperfect. All advertisements, particularly those oriented towards beauty and self development , create the false impression that there is some illusionary perfection to be pursued.
I found peace the day I realized that pursuit of an ultimate perfection is an illusion and began my life journey knowing that who and how I am is the perfect me.
Anything including living things will have wear and tear with use. If unused aging will create the tear. Either way I love the fact that nothing is permanent or perfect forever. My challenge has been to accept everything and everybody to be perfect in their own way in the present.
This must be a skewed up philosophy… I am still learning.
Oh, I read this somewhere that, as a philosophy, the belief is that the object is more valuable & beautiful with its history revealed.
What does perfect life even means?
Does perfect life even exist? Is it a society standard that everyone have to have a perfect life? 😅
Totally agree 👍 👏 🙌
Yes indeed ..Annie and Faridah. The value we give to things is related to its free availability and durability like gold or platinum or and other gems I suppose. Repairing using gold perhaps signifies that our hurtful life experiences are the most valuable lessons in life. My so called life experiences don’t define me either. I prefer to believe that I am invaluable more than gold …. irreplaceable. None like me ever existed nor will ever exist.
“the glow in their eyes is that gold powder”
Beena you are a poet !
Hi Marilys,
The work is done by Shobha my friend. I wrote about the technique;)