I recently watched the 2015 Amazon Prime series “The Man in the High Castle” (based on the Phillip K. Dick science fiction novel from 1962). It presents an alternate history in which the Nazis and the Japanese won WWII. I’ll skip the review of the series except to say it was captivating and binge-worthy, but, like many shows, overstayed its welcome and made it characters who were sympathetic annoying or killed them off and characters who were unsympathetic jarringly human and likeable.
But in one scene a timeline hopping character (known as “travelers” in the series) who is a Minister in the occupying Japanese government makes amends to an alternate universe version of his son by mending a coffee mug smashed in an alcoholic rage using a traditional Japanese technique that up until that point I had not known - Kintsugi.
Per Wikipedia - Kintsugi (Japanese: 金継ぎ, roughly translating as "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, or "golden repair") is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.
Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated... a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin....Mushin is often literally translated as "no mind," but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject.
It’s a beautiful philosophy that treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. How often do we as men try to hide our scars? To try to put ourselves back together in a way that acts as if we’ve never been hurt. Are we trained to act like Humpty Dumpties who never fell? We all know the need for a sacred space to acknowledge our wounds and the other men in those spaces are often the gold that we use to make ourselves stronger. Your fall is your story. Your repair is your story. The only sin is to stay broken.