Monday, 2 January 2017

Kintsugi-more beautiful for having been broken

kintsugi

(Noun) To repair with gold; The art of repairing metal with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken

New Year-a time where the machines which profit from our perceived "imperfections" go into overdrive.

Just when you thought you had reached your destination, you are rudely shaken awake from your warm back of the bus slumber, and told its time to "shape up or ship out"

We are too fat, too poor, too unsuccessful, too ambitious, not ambitious enough. We stare up at the top 0.001% of the world and are encouraged to rage at our bad luck at not having been born beautiful or rich enough to be special.

Andy Warhol spoke about us all being famous for fifteen minutes and we sneer at his lack of imagination-fifteen minutes, I was a twitter hashtag once mate, a whole day of trending before I was toppled by #strictly

The Internets ability to make us all stars of our own mini universe seems to create more disconnection not less. Tapping a like on a photo of a strangers breakfast whilst grunting at your neighbours. We have never had so much and never been so miserable-why is that?

Maybe its because we are being sold the lie of perfection. Friendships should look like a mixture of Cold Feet and Friends, family units should be the Waltons not Shameless and we should all be pretty-even our pets.

We are force fed perfection and it is impossible to achieve.

How can we navigate this when we feel we are not just imperfect, not just a professional underachiever but actually broken? Not a cute gappy early Madonna Borderline grin but a Shane McGowen brown toothed grimace?

My suggestion? We embrace Kintsugi

We stop seeing our signs of wear and tear as problems and instead fill our cracks (front and back) with silver and gold.

We allow old salty tears to become gloopy lacquer that holds us back together and gives us the sheen of a survivor.

We pile our thin, non bouncy hair on our heads like crones and cackle loudly at how free we are to go on faster rides and park in sweeter tighter spots now our paintwork is chipped and the vinyl on our seats stained and worn.