SUMMER LOTUS

21st March 2024. 4 min read

Image From Canva.com

Recently, I wrote about Wabi Sabi which is about embracing the beauty of imperfection, Impermanence and incompleteness in life.

You may read about Wabi Sabi under “Flaws in Beauty” written on 26th January 2023.

This time, I want to add the Japanese principle of kintsugi.

What is Kintsugi? It means golden joinery.

Kintsugi 金継ぎis the art of repairing broken pottery by putting together the pieces using glue made from tree sap and the cracks are filled with molten gold, silver or platinum.

What you get is a beautiful piece of pottery.

Image by Matt Perkins from splash.com

Origin of Kintsugi

Story has it that a 15th century military ruler, Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent one of his tea bowls to China for repair but was disappointed with the result.

He asked a local craftsman to find a more aesthetically pleasing method to repair. The craftsman’s solution was to emphasise the cracks instead of concealing them and Kintsugi was born.

Like Wabi Sabi that embraces our imperfection, Kintsugi also accepts imperfection and aims to make it better.

Lessons from Kintsugi

1 Kintsugi teaches us not to waste.

A broken object is not necessarily useless.

By repairing it using the right technique, we develop a more beautiful object keeping our memories of that object that we treasure.

As each object breaks randomly, the art that ensues is never the same.

2 It also teaches us that in life, we will meet setbacks, disappointments and feel broken sometimes.

Our traumatic events may scar us but we could heal ourselves by filling these cracks with hope, positive attitude, determination, new skills and creativity and other positive traits. That makes each of us unique and precious.

In essence, it is about resilience to the hard knocks of life.

I think of Aimee Mullins whom the world admire immensely. (You may watch her Ted talk presentation on YouTube)

Aimee Mullins is an exceptional person. She is truly inspiring to the world.

As a baby, her legs were amputated below the knees due to a condition called Fibula Hemimelia but she grew up in a very positive environment.

Aimee defied the doctor’s limited expectations. With the aid of prosthetic legs, she not only learn to walk but run fast!

Aimee became the 1996 Paralympic champion in Atlanta, setting three world records in 100m, 200m and long jump!

She also became an actress, successful model, all on prosthetic legs. Nothing could stop her.

Today she is a motivational speaker and her TED talk has drawn millions of people.

She has an amazing 12 sets of beautiful prosthetic legs and could decide how tall she wants to be.

She has given people inspiration, fresh insight and empowerment to anyone who is limited by other’s expectations.

In a sense, it’s likened to practising Kintsugi, becoming the strong, remarkable and beautiful person she is today.

She has inspired many by never bemoaning her fate or yielding to her condition. All the positive traits of courage, creativity, cheer, grit, confidence, positivity, etc are evident.

Kintsugi, a principle I will always try to apply when facing any setbacks or disappointment.

5th March 2024 5 min read

It’s hard to take that first step. I never thought I would procrastinate so much. Months and years have slipped by and I have not attained many things that I had set out to achieve.

To continue like this, I can only be good at one thing – day dreaming. Even my cats are living a purposeful life, one scouting for intruders like cockroachess and rats and making it a success.

The other lying on the couch, inspiring me to chill in this hurried, harried life.

I remember the most important slogan that I did not act on;

Nike said, “Just Do It!” This short, sharp, and succinct command reverberates in. my mind every night.

So here, I am, coming up with a short speech for my speech contest.

A speech with a purpose; it is about not delaying what you have set out to do. It is about procrastination. It is about the obstacle in my path; in this case, the obstacle to improving public speaking.

My friend had threw me this challenge to join the contest and I avoided it like a plaque because of laziness, uncertainty and fear. I gave the excuse of going away but deep down, I wanted to try but my devil’s advocate said, “Give up! There are too many obstacles “

My secret reasons;

Laziness because it involves mental work, coming up with a title, collecting evidence to support the speech and writing a persuasive one.

There. is so much to contend with. already daily but I know that I can do it if I only get started.

Uncertainty because I have not done project speeches for eons and the skills have been placed on the back burner. To warm them up again requires effort.

Fear because of performance anxiety, discomfort being scrutinised by the audience and the fear of losing my words .

Nike called again in my mind;

Just do it! If not now, when?

Do you want to return all the skills to TM like your language learning? Do you want to slip back into a loss of self confidence?

Do you want to be a scaredy- cat always?

What’s there to lose?

To err is human.

So I wrote this speech in 5 minutes because of Nike. This speech contest has started me on another resolution that’s been in Cold Storage – reactivating, rehearsing and reliving my love of a foreign language.

In fact, it had started me on a long list of things I wanted to do ;

1 To embark on a new skill in my career

2 To spruce up my practice so I can hand over to younger people and retire partially

3 To read more so that I can imbibe wisdom from books and live wisely

4 To find more meaning in my life

I find that being able to achieve is a habit, it is not an endowment from Heaven. If you do something enough times, it just gets easier. Procrastination is a bad habit. Persistence is a good habit.

A Case in point

When I wanted to improve my Mandarin, it presented as an obstacle because my mind thinks so.

The mass of words looked formidable not to mention the phrases which I needed to check up constantly for its meaning and pronunciation.

Somehow due to a deep seated passion, I struggled with its constant reading and now the mass of words does not hinder me so much anymore. Rather it is. the choice of topics to read that takes my time.

This makes me realise; We set up the obstacles ourselves. We need to just do it. A habit to keep working at it until the obstacles disappear whether it is laziness, uncertainty or fear .