Embracing the Cracks: Inspiration for Transformation
Jewel and Kaya
This past weekend was Greg’s family reunion in Dallas, Texas. About sixty relatives from around the country gathered to fellowship and reconnect, as they have since 1979, after a long, three-year absence. At the banquet on Saturday evening, I wore a black and gold dress that had caught my eye about a year prior at The Brownstone, a Harlem fixture for more than twenty-five years. The proprietor, Princess, remembered exactly was I was looking for and put in a special order for me. I recalled the gold lines on the dress as striking, fluid veins of interconnected stylized pathways that shifted and glimmered with movement.
Our daughter Kaya, who came from Boston to join us, walked up to me after dinner and told me how much she liked my dress—that it reminded her of kintsugi—the Japanese art of mending pottery. She quickly pulled up an image on her phone to show me. I was intrigued and wanted to know more.
The Art of Fixing the Broken
In the 15th century, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, unsatisfied with how broken ceramics were mended with staples, tasked his artisans to mend the broken ceramics with lacquer and gold. This came to be known as kintsugi. After repair, the broken ceramic is seen as more beautiful and more valuable—made so by the damage it suffered. The flaw became a unique part of the object’s history.
Not simply a mending technique, kintsugi is a philosophy for life—a symbol of psychological resilience associated with the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi—the beauty of impermanence and imperfection.
In a post I wrote in April 2021 entitled, “Resilience: The Creation of Beautiful Scars,” Merry Clayton’s story reveals the internal fortitude she pulled on to get through her brokenness, literal and otherwise.
The lyrics of her song “Beautiful Scars” is reflective of kintsugi spirit:
Every hurt I've endured, every cut
Every cut, every bruise.
Wear it proud like a badge, I wear it like a tattoo.
These are beautiful scars that I have on my heart
When we approach leadership from a kintsugi philosophy, we value being authentic, bringing all of who we are to every moment—not hiding our brokenness, our mistakes, but learning from them—to help us develop strengthen of character and grow beyond what we thought we knew about who we are.
Herbie and Miles
Jazz pianist Herbie Hancock tells a story about playing a “wrong” chord during a Miles Davis solo on the tune So What. Hancock was devasted. He says that Miles paused and then played notes that made his “wrong” chord sound right. The moment was a significant music and life lesson for Hancock. As the band leader, Miles took responsibility for how Hancock’s chord became a part of the performance—a reality to embrace—not something to shun.
Our healing from difficult moments is the glue of our story—bonding our lived experiences to bring the golden richness of the pieces together. As leaders, when we hold and embrace those moments, for ourselves and others, we can recognize how it can create an opportunity for deeper understanding and growth. It’s the journey through and beyond the brokenness that redefines and elevates who we are. It becomes the inspiration for transformation.
