You don’t need Kintsugi: you’re not broken

Gladiolus: (Gladiolus undulatus) a symbol of strength of character — Gladiolus: *(Gladiolus undulatus)* a symbol of strength of character

You’ve probably heard of kintsugi in this age of tumblr and motivational Instagram posts. This Japanese art teaches that broken objects are not something to hide, but to display with pride. By repairing broken ceramics with gold, this art form gives a new lease of life to pottery, making it even more refined thanks to its scars.

It’s a popular analogy to apply to people suffering from mental health issues. You can totally be put back together and become even stronger, even more beautiful. But this is predicated on the idea that you were broken in the first place. You weren’t dropped, or smashed, or damaged: you’re just experiencing a mental health problem.

Kintsugi uses liquid gold to bring together the pieces of a broken pottery item, both fixing and highlighting the breaks. Every repaired piece is unique, because of the randomness with which the ceramic shatters and the irregular patterns that arise from the use of the metal bonder. A beautiful idea, indeed, but surely it’s not helpful to think of ourselves as broken pieces of pottery.

You can totally be put back together and become even stronger, even more beautiful.

You are not a delicate vase knocked to the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces by your life experiences; nor are you defined by those experiences or their subsequent resolutions. You are not forever known as the ‘repaired’ vase; you’re you and you always have been.

The art teaches us not to throw away broken objects and that breakages can become valuable. It teaches us to try to repair things because we can make them even more beautiful than they started. This can be interpreted as resilience. But don’t think of yourself as something damaged or in need of fixing.

Learn from your experiences, take the best from them, and move on, but don’t think of it as putting yourself back together, no matter how beautiful the golden glue may be.

Don’t think of yourself as something damaged or in need of fixing.

You were already unique, and precious. The scars you bear from your experiences aren’t healed because you were never broken. They’re simply bookmarks, notes scribbled in the margins of your life as a whole. You are not defined by these events, nor by your moving on. You are not a better or a stronger person; you were always good; you were always strong. You were never broken.

You are not made more beautiful by your flaws because you don’t have any flaws. You weren’t put back together, nor did you fix yourself. You have been hurt, but you did not break. You have lived through pain, but you were not damaged. You are simply human.

We have a tendency to cling to misfortunes as a way to prove to ourselves that we ‘deserve’ our feelings, that we must be damaged goods. We justify our experiences and our emotions by thinking of ourselves as broken. Does this make us feel validated? Does this make our experiences real?

Kintsugi is a beautiful idea, indeed, but surely it’s not helpful to think of ourselves as broken pieces of pottery.

But you are not broken. You aren’t lumbering through life with sharp edges hurting people along the way, or leaving bloody fingerprints on the world. You haven’t been ignoring the cracks in your existence or struggling to fit all the pieces of your life back together. You don’t need to put yourself back together (because you were never broken) and you don’t need to emphasize your experiences with golden glue.

You never had any imperfections to begin with! There is nothing wrong with you. Reject the idea that you need fixing. You’re fine.

Things may fall apart. But you won’t.

Take care of yourself. Look after your body, mind and soul. But don’t fix yourself—there’s nothing broken. ■