Human Kintsugi

You’re Not Broken Forever

This is from the archives of my first year on Substack, with a whopping six subscribers. They are the real O.Gs.

Whenever we break a coffee cup, it generally ends up in the garbage unless it is just the handle that breaks off. That gets super-glued back on. Broken things are unusable, right?

In Japan, the process of fixing broken pottery has become an art form. It is called kintsugi. The fixers fill the broken places with gold lacquer, embracing the brokenness.

Earnest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms, “The world breaks everyone, and afterwards, many are strong in the broken places.” Except even strong, broken people have a hard time holding the pieces together.

Eventually, Hemingway committed suicide. No matter the level of inner strength, it’s finite. He did accomplish writing timeless books even with his limited vocabulary.

I had to face my own brokenness in the first two weeks of July 2015, starting with the holiday weekend. Neighborhood kids blew up some fireworks next door, st…