Cracked Cups - Broken Cups

 The Japanese have a practice call Kintsugi.  Kintsugi is the art of "fixing" broken pottery, making it look even more beautiful with the repairs which have been made. It is also a telling, not throwing something away because it is broken. 

"As a life philosophy, kintsugi argues that the places where things have cracked and been repaired are not failures. They are evidence of a history that has been lived. Difficulty, loss, rupture: these are not things to hide. They are things that, when attended to honestly, become part of what makes a person or a relationship or a period of life worth understanding."

It is a cool way to look at something broken, maybe even if we look at it in our own lives. I see this in many of us, we are cracked, some of us are broken and even some of us are smashed; smashed to pieces. Can there be a fixing if the piece is smashed to pieces? Do we even recognize if something is cracked or broken, and if it is, do we adjust our view of it?

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So what do we do with people who are cracked? Society labels them cracked and treats them accordingly. The police are the hands of society. The hands of society is rough. "Man-handled" is a soft term to describe the treatment of the cracked. Thing is, some cracks can be fixed like the Japanese art of redemption-Kintsugi. In Canada, and the United States we really don't do that kind of thing. If it's broken, well fuck it, toss it, in some cases "have at it," smash it even more. 

We tend to view the cracked as ugly, don't we? It has no purpose, can't be fixed, no redeeming qualities in something broken, is there? Try pick up the Cracked and you could get hurt, maybe get a cut from the jagged edges.  Japanese society seems to know there is redemption, even beauty in  the Cracked. So much so, they give energy and time to fixing what is cracked, what is broken. What a way to see the Cracked, isn't it. 

Indigenous people have been cracked with all that colonial bullshit that happened and is still going on.

Interacting with the Cracked, is a matter of how we see and approach the Cracked. Maybe the Cracked can be fixed or mended, who knows. All I know is we have a bias towards the Cracked. Where we see this most often is by the actions of the First Responders (Police, Ambulance), the decisions makers and then the "everyday Karen and Karl" on the street. There are no shortages of jokes, complaints, insults regarding the Cracked being played out in social media, television shows-sitcoms-movies and in the news. The Cracked is a target for everyone. 

So how do we see the redeeming qualities in the Cracked, the slightly chipped cups and the broken cups? 

There are many many many reasons for a cup being chipped, cracked, broken and smashed beyond recognition. We can name them, the reasons of course, but in the end the reasons come down to a multitude of actions, of years, of held beliefs, of seeing, and imbedded in laws. Now how do we go about with Kintsugi, with fixing the broken, the cracked cups? I don't think it is up to us to fix the broken, we don't have control over them. What we can do is this: Stop being a fucking arsehole to them, the cracked cups. Stop looking down on them, judging the fuck out of them. Maybe instead of choking them, kicking them, spitting on them, ignoring their existence, instead of killing them,we acknowledge them cups, as people, as a human being. That's a start. We need to see the person behind all the shards of broken glass (cup material). How the heck do we do that?

We need to exercise. Exercise our compassion. With any thing we do, we have to keep repeating and repeating until we can get it right. It may not be perfectly right but it's better than where we started. We have to look at them as a vessel that is incapable of holding anything anymore. It has to be hard for cops, they see the broken, the cracked cups everyday. It must be difficult to see humanity in the damaged. I guess it's a way to protect themselves from getting cut by the shrapnel of broken glass (people get it). 

In the end we all have chips, cracks and are broken. Does that mean we are beyond use? Beyond fixing? Beyond compassion?  

We need to be aware of our bias, conscious and unconscious bias. Our ugly view of the cracked. Be like Johnny Cash and wear Black. "Well, you know Johnny always wore black, and he wore black 'cause he identified with the poor and the downtrodden..." 

Maybe God will cut down those who step on the cracked cups.