Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of cracks with urushi lacquer, which is the traditional labour-intensive production process, time-consuming and expensive.  The broken pottery is dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is like the maki-e technique. Maki-e (literally “sprinkled pictures”) is a representative lacquerware technique that originated in Japan around 1,200 years ago. Maki-e is done by painting lacquer motifs on the surface of a piece using a fine brush and then sprinkling gold powder onto the lacquer before it hardens, this technique produces luxurious decorations.

Kintsugi tells us of the temporariness of all things; nothing stays forever. Like a piece of pottery, our lives are filled with fragility, setbacks and unpredictability. The philosophy of Kintsugi highlights that resilience is not merely about bouncing back from adversity but also about accepting the process of repair and renewal. Just like the meticulous process of fixing broken pottery, our relationships, illnesses, profession, education, demand patience, effort and care to mend snags in our fabric of life. Accepting the reality of imperfection frees us to spend time on other projects, even on our work-life balance.

Kintsugi helps us to realize that life itself is not perfect. Every moment we are fighting a world full of chaos. Every time we try to edit our script of life, we become vulnerable by making few new errors. You might get cheated by someone whom you trust the most, you might lose your job, you might not be able to catch up with newness in technology, you may get sick in the middle of a project. An environmental problem like a tornado, hurricane, earthquake may destroy your home. Control what you can and accept the rest.

Self-acceptance is defined as accepting all our attributes, positive as well as negative. When we accept ourselves, we embrace every part of ourselves, the good, the bad and the ugly. Self-acceptance must be unconditional. You made a mistake, but it’s okay, nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes. We all have flaws, and that’s what makes us human. As human, we all imperfect. Till we breath our last, we are all works in progress. And perfection itself is an illusion.

The philosophy of Kintsugi in Japanese is about being non-judgemental, accepting, and empathetic towards ourselves. Facilitators and workshop participants of Kintsugi explore the connections between the Kintsugi way and the recovery from illness depression, anxiety etc. Once, I enrolled for a short course of pottery, it gave me invaluable lessons that go beyond the clay. To shape a pot we need patience, accept our faults, reshape the clay with firmness by finding balance, creating resilience, and practicing mindfulness.  I realized that like the pot in process, we all have cracks in our body and mind here and there which we try to repair. 

The repaired cracks of the pottery represent our healing process. The difficulties in our life leave many scars which take time to heal. What’s important our willingness and our ability to heal.

God gifted us the freedom to administer our own life, He allows us to connect with Him as and when we want. He helps us to heal our cracks and shape up as a masterpiece. 

When we look around, we find some people on the emotional or sensitive side of the spectrum. These people get affected by sensitive issues more than others. People who are emotional, don’t get emotional for the sake of getting attention; they are emotional because that’s the way they have always been.  Sadly, today not many people want show their emotional side, simply because society considers them as weaklings. Hence people dislike even appearing to be sensitive. Sensitive people frequently live life on the brink of emotional snowballing, which means sometimes their emotions get out of control, and out of proportion in some situations.

A highly emotional personality is also very sensitive and will not need a big stimulus to react. A not so emotional person can also be very sensitive but will not react emotionally at the same stimulus. I think people who are more emotional experience life more than those who aren’t. They are more connected with reality, they feel more deeply than others. Therefore, literally they live more than others. Having feelings makes these people experience the world on different levels with intensity; they see, touch, and feel, hear sounds, smell more vividly. They take in information from the outside world and experience it at personal level in their heart, hence they experience happiness, pain, agony and pleasure, mysteries easily; they are more connected with the surrounding and environment.

A research was carried out by The Carnegie Institute of Technology on EQ that showed that 85% of financial success is due to skills in “connecting with ease with others,” inner personality, ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. They found that only 15% was due to technical ability. In other words people skills come easily when emotional intelligence is high. And, this is the most crucial skills. Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that people like to do business with a person whom they can trust rather than someone they don’t, even if that that person is offering a better product at a lower price.

Sensitive people are more empathic. Empathy is one of the greatest quality of a person which helps him/her functioning in the world with more understanding because it allows to put oneself in another person’s shoes, and see the world through their eyes, and feel the way they feel. This is incredibly important, as empathizing helps one to understand how other people function, why they do the things that they do, why they behave the way they do, why they talk the way they do. It allows the person to form a very personalized connection with others. Because of vulnerability they become very passionate about causes.  And, nobody can deny the fact that passionate people live a fulfilled life. Unless we connect with the world empathically, we will feel lonely. Even when we are surrounded by people and we don’t feel connected to them, we feel lost in the crowd.  When we experience emotions in response to things that happen outside of ourselves, we are forming a connection to those things and to the world outside our skin.

It’s sad, but people tend to perceive emotional people as weaklings, because emotional people feel things more deeply than others. Sometimes people with high Emotional Quotient make poor decisions, but they learn from those poor decisions, and come out well. Being sensitive is not being weak, in fact it is being human that allows one to be in tune with their souls, and it gives them permission to follow their instinct and have faith in themselves even when they experience odds. Being sensitive helps in looking at flawed people as beautiful people. Sensitive people can handle their egos subtly. They can much easily put their egos aside and bridge gaps with others. Speaking and feeling from a sensitive mind and heart is a strength and not certainly not a weakness.

I think probably when sensitive people show their emotion such as hurt, irritation, frustration or anger, where others see them as wavered. Whereas a more apathetic person, who can put on mask of calmness is able to hide his/her feelings, giving the notion of, “I don’t care”, “I am not bothered.” But then they are the dangerous people who pretend their feelings and emotions.

International search firm Egon Zehnder International analyzed 515 senior executives and discovered that those who were strongest in emotional intelligence were more likely to succeed than those strongest in either IQ or relevant previous experience. Research that has been done on the relationship between emotional intelligence (EQ) and IQ has shown only a weak correlation between the two.

When someone says that “I have invested my emotions in a cause/ a relationship” it means the person has invested his/her energy, conscientiousness, focus, dedication and drive in a relationship or a cause. We don’t deliberate on investing emotions, that’s because we don’t understand the concept. Make your emotions work for you, and you will be unstoppable. The more emotions you experience — the more emotions you can better understand — the more you will learn about yourself and people in general. Weakness is allowing your emotions to take the wheel. Don’t let your emotions govern your life.

When you get affected by situation or condition of other people and try your best to help them in improving or handling difficult situation effectively without making your own condition weak or worse, it is a trait of great human being.