Kuntsugi -The Art of Being Broken

Growing up I like taking things apart. Clocks, radios, calculators, if they have screws, I have a screwdriver ready. In the process I have voided many warranties while never quite able to put things back together the way they were, not to mention getting them to work ever again. I think it was a source of frustration for my parents.

I suppose it is a sickness, the curiosity to want to know how things work without the wherewithal to ensure they stay working once I have taken them apart. They say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Boy do I have trouble with that first part. I seem to have the proclivity to break things, take them apart. Things that were perfectly working well ruined because I couldn't leave well enough alone.

One would have hoped that I have become adept at fixing things, but the truth is all I have become is being really really well-acquainted with brokenness. I am a connoisseur of damaged goods, and chief amongst them, myself. I know a lot of the mistakes, missteps, and mishaps. Probably because I have made most of them at one point or another.

I have acquired a whole myriad of ways to be wrong, utterly and profusely wrong. And when I look deep into my soul, I see the many patches that covered old voids from when I crashed, burned, and shattered.

That being said, I hope I never stop having the courage and the curiosity to tease things apart, or risk being hurt in the search for better understanding. No matter how much it may backfire. We can't always fix things, we may not even be able to glue back the pieces together. What matters is we dare to do better. And maybe, just maybe, we keep all the pieces together in the likelihood a fellow tinkerer comes along and fix it once and for all.