“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”
So wrote Ernest Hemingway in his novel A Farewell to Arms.
I was reminded of these words recently as October marks the second anniversary of the death of my beloved girlfriend Elaine. Since her death, I have been living with the subsequent grief that comes from loosing a partner you loved and planned to spend the rest of your life with. I feel my heart broke the day Elaine died and something in me died with her. I have lived these last few years with a sense of feeling broken. At the same time my life has continued to unfold and I try to engage with it. I go to work, do the weekly food shop, pay the bills, spend time with friends and family. Yet beneath all this, a sense of being broken continues. When we have something broken in our lives, we generally try and mend it or fix it.
In Japan there is a word Kintsukuroi or 金繕い which means “Golden Repair”
Kintsukuroi or kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer and silver or gold.
The flaws of the broken pottery are highlighted by this process. There is an understanding that the new piece is more beautiful for having been broken. The flaw in the pottery is seen.
as part of the history of the object, creating its own unique beauty, rather than something to disguise or be hidden. It is in fact more beautiful for having been broken.
If we take the image of the broken piece of pottery and it’s golden repair, we may reflect on our own lives and the places that may feel broken within us. Maybe rather than feeling a need to hide those aspects of ourselves, we could allow them to be visible to the world, learning to carry them with us. The broken flaw is now a part of us, it never leaves us, but it also doesn’t define us as we begin to look towards the future and the life we can imagine for ourselves.
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.
Rashani Rea