'Hidden Damage' Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen Kintsugi ("golden joinery" or "golden repair") is the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold. It treats the breakage and repair of the item as part of its history, its journey, its existence. Rather than hiding the damage, it brightly illuminates the repair, inviting the world to see its improved beauty. Just like pottery, we humans can crack, splinter, break, shatter. These knocks remain part of our being and, whilst a brave face might create a temporary disguise, nobody can hide forever. At least I couldn't. To heal, I found I had to expose. Kintsugi treats the crack as merely an event in the life of the object, not a reason to end it. Kintsugi knows that something is more beautiful for having been broken. As someone who considers them
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