My Kintsugi moment, mending the broken!

I pursue many passions and pottery is one of them. Albeit, as much as I would like to follow the art form, it seems to have been jinxed! Let me spare you the tedious details.  

There is something magically beautiful about pottery that has immense calming effect on me. Pinching pots, scoring, making slabs, wedging the clay, attaching coil and working at rambunctious wheel quietens my utterly chaotic mind sending an instant signal that I need to slow myself down, breathe and focus! 

There is deep sense of satisfaction derived from giving a form to amorphous lump of clay. One feels sense of integration with the earth, the very source of our material. There is some strange sense of belonging. 

I have a few ceramic pieces that were made when I had joined the studio some time back. Those pots hold very special place in my heart and home. I am bit possessive about those pieces as there were very few left after gifting my pots to friends and family. 

Last week, one of my ceramic tiles and two pots met calamitous end leaving me sulking; blaming the Universe, the retrograde Mercury in my zodiac, bad karma, black magic, influence of all possible planets and just about everything under the Sun. Well, honestly, I don't really believe in all that but loss of my pots made me emotionally wobbly. Our new domestic help; the culprit of the tragedy tried to console me in vain.

I was struggling to hold back my tears while picking up broken pieces of my beloved pots when I remembered words of the artist who taught me pottery, "Simi, NEVER get attached to any piece you make." She had said philosophically with sage like calm. "No matter how hard you have worked in the process of making any piece, eventually, many of the pieces WILL break, get deformed in the process, disintegrated in the kiln or even after having taken a perfect permanent form might be damaged due to careless handling or some freak accident". She had added, "Mend the cracks the moment you notice them emerge so that they don't weaken rest of your creation."

Those words kept echoing in my mind and I wondered how true they stand for relationships and life in general! We live in the world engulfed with perpetual sense of brokenness: broken homes, broken relationships, broken hearts, broken faiths, broken values, broken countries obsessed with wars, broken dreams, broken trust and no matter how much we try, we can never escape the pain of being broken in some way or other in life. Sometimes we tend to be consumed by the despair losing our grip assuming things are beyond repair instead of focusing on putting the pieces together and understand there is no perfect "whole" and life is about understanding our "brokenness", analyse the pain, embrace the scars through  journey of life, grant some time to heal and transform them into something meaningful and beautiful.  

If you have ever tried pottery, you would know clay imparts many important life lessons; especially patience and respect. Realizing that the material can have its own mind so when unexpected cracks and breakage occur, one experiences disappointment and sadness but also learns acceptance that one is not always in control. The only choice one is left with is, take a deep breath, pick up the shards and start over yet again! 

My ceramic tile has been fixed but pots are beyond repair. Perhaps, this accident was my Kintsugi* moment, a reminder for me to realize the meaninglessness of my attachments to the pots literally and metaphorically. I have started to focus on mending the cracks that are worth the efforts and decided to let go a few attachments, thank the Universe for the role they played in my life and move on without any bitterness or negativity and always remember, no matter what life holds in next moment I am never too broken for a beautiful transformation and claim myself  anew!    

  

“The world breaks everyone, then some become strong at the broken places.” ~Ernest Hemingway

*Kintsugi in Japanese means "to patch with gold or golden joining". Kintsugi is Japanese ancient art form used in repairing broken things with liquid gold, silver or lacquer dusted with gold to mend the pieces of fractured pottery and in the process enhancing its breaks and beauty. This method usually grants much more aesthetic value to the originally created piece.