{"id":2436,"date":"2023-10-03T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T06:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/kintsugi-and-wabi-sabi\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T17:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:18:09","slug":"kintsugi-and-wabi-sabi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/kintsugi-and-wabi-sabi\/","title":{"rendered":"Kintsugi and Wabi-Sabi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Kintsugi and Wabi-Sabi are concepts whose meaning I find very inspiring.<\/p>\n\n<p>Right from the start: I have no &#8220;real&#8221; knowledge or experience of Buddhism, Shintoism, Eastern philosophy, or Japan. <\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-wir-ach-so-aufgeklarten\">We, the so-called enlightened<\/h2>\n\n<p>But I do have experience with how we deal with mistakes here, in our culture. With flaws. With what is broken. Or with those who are broken.   <\/p>\n\n<p>We love perfection. We all do. <\/p>\n\n<p>We celebrate high art, the beautiful and the complete. The deeper meaning and the higher purpose.<br\/>The clear form. The straight seam and the sharp edge.<br\/>The good ideas. Our culture.<br\/>Ourselves\u2014as long as we are everything we&#8217;re supposed to be.<br\/>I suspect the phrase &#8220;Others can do it too!&#8221; costs more lives than cars and cigarettes combined.   <\/p>\n\n<p>Everything that doesn&#8217;t measure up is considered inadequate. Like in school. Inadequate! Insufficient! Sit down! F!     <br\/>Grit your teeth and push through! Or crash into the wall! <\/p>\n\n<p>What breaks and has flaws must go. It needs to be hidden.<br\/>So no one notices the dent in the dish or the crack in the mind\u2014the one that, perhaps (Shh! Don&#8217;t tell anyone!) others have too. <\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-es-geht-auch-anders\">There&#8217;s another way!<\/h2>\n\n<p>I was shaking with joy when I read these concepts, Kintsugi and Wabi-Sabi, along with an interpretation of them.<\/p>\n\n<p>Not the obvious beauty, but the hidden one.<br\/>The beauty that isn&#8217;t cheap, but requires willingness to be seen.<\/p>\n\n<p>Wabi-Sabi. Honoring the imperfect. The crooked and the askew.<br\/>The value in itself.  <\/p>\n\n<p>Kintsugi. Repairing, healing what is broken, not discarding it.<br\/>Highlighting the healing, not hiding it.<br\/>Valuing the break and its overcoming.<br\/>Understanding the seam as part of the whole. As part of a story. A journey.   <\/p>\n\n<p>Everything has its value. And that value increases with every obstacle, with every trace that life and time leave behind. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kintsugi and Wabi-Sabi are concepts whose meaning I find very inspiring. Right from the start: I have no &#8220;real&#8221; knowledge or experience of Buddhism, Shintoism, Eastern philosophy, or Japan. We, the so-called enlightened But I do have experience with how we deal with mistakes here, in our culture. With flaws. With what is broken. Or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5043,438],"tags":[168,439,5044],"class_list":["post-2436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-let-it-be","category-mindfulness","tag-a-matter-of-attitude","tag-mindfulness","tag-self-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions\/2437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kayhelena.work\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}