By our age, we have an intimate understanding that change is the only constant. We’ve seen it play out countless times with jobs, relationships, homes, possessions, and even our own bodies.
As any Robert Frost or SE Hinton fan knows:
Nothing gold can stay.
For perfectionists, this is a particularly maddening reality. We want things to turn out as planned and remain enduring. But then along comes a curveball: a pandemic, a recession, a breakup, or an unexpected illness for yourself or a loved one.
It doesn’t even have to be something cataclysmic. After all, things naturally wear out or break over time.
Being able to embrace change with grace is an art. And the ability to recover and restore the bits that still work while letting go of the old ideal is a practice. The two together are beautifully expressed by the Japanese tradition of kintsugi and, relatedly, the embrace of imperfection known as wabi-sabi.
Mending Senses
Loosely translated, kintsugi means “golden repair.” It’s the ancient Japanese art of fixing broken pottery using gold-dusted lacquer. The metaphorical application is all about resilience and your ability to put back together your physical and psychological fragments in the wake of disruption and evolution.
As Japanese kintsugi artist Hiroko Kiyokawa told the BBC:
I think our broken parts can be mended. So we should never give up on life.
This is a beautiful way of saying don’t hide your scars. They’re an essential part of your history and what helps make you interesting and unique.
The Art of Deliberate Imperfection
Taking the whole ethos of embracing your flaws to the next level, artist and author Austin Kleon created a matrix that shows “deliberate imperfection” as the sweet spot for creativity, inspiration, and innovation. For example:
Mistakes or ‘happy accidents’ that don’t get thrown out, like mishearings that lead to new ideas.
Kleon notes that intentionally integrating flaws makes art — and life itself — more interesting over, say, boring old mastery. From punk rock to Navajo rugs, the work’s value, appeal, and staying power come from welcoming glitches and mistakes as part of the creative process.
Just as kintsugi honors both breaking and fixing as a valuable part of a vessel, you can move from fractured to fulfilled by realizing the beauty of life isn’t found in an unattainable ideal but in the unpredictable, unexpected process.
That way, the work of reinvention and transformation becomes not an arduous journey but a path forward paved with golden opportunities.
The Art of Imperfection (Austin Kleon)
Kintsugi: Japan’s ancient art of embracing imperfection (BBC)
