“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets through.” Leonard Cohen.
We begin this positive health journey by focusing on a relationship we have with ourselves. Are you able to be alone, to count on yourself, to inspire and trust yourself? How comfortable do you feel with yourself? How grateful are you for the person you have become?
We will be asking these and similar questions to bring more clarity to our lives, to be grateful for what works and appreciate what no longer serves us. It’s easy to be grateful when life goes on smoothly, and we feel complete, but how to be grateful when we face overwhelming challenges, and life breaks into small pieces?
In our western culture, we tend to think that what is broken or damaged is useless, and when our body or mind break we label it as a setback. We are not being taught how to mend the damaged pieces, how to put the tiny fragments together and create something that is much more than the sum of its parts.
In Japan, there is a grace and beauty in the art of mending. In the context of the tea ceremony, there is no judgement around what’s useful and what’s useless in the way we are accustomed to seeing it. In fact, a broken cup would be valued and appreciated simply because of the graceful way it was repaired according to the traditional art of kintsukuroi meaning “to patch with gold."
Often we try to repair what’s broken and make it “good enough” or perhaps even as good as new. The Japanese masters understand that by mending the broken cup with gold, they can create an alternative to “good enough.” They can create something that actually adds value because after the mending process the cup changes its form into something utterly unique, purely itself. In result of this transformation broken becomes elegant and useless becomes priceless.
What would it be like to live your life as a work of art? A work of art that is in progress, an unfolding masterpiece you can shape into the ideal Unique You.
You don’t need gold to fill in your cracks. All you need is self-awareness, patience and skills.
What one crack can you fill in today?
