Repairing Ourselves.

The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. Edition 222.

“Everything that has a shape breaks”- Japanese Proverb

But…

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”- Ernest Hemingway

And…

“Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness”—Elizabeth Spelman

Paths to repair.

1.Poetry.

2.Water

3.Wabi-Sabi

4. Kintsugi

5. Gardens.

6. Untying

1.Poetry

Poems restores us to what is deepest in ourselves.

Poetry finds the perfect words in the perfect order.

CK Williams in his Pulitzer Prize winning collection “Repair” writes how

‘Self-doubt is almost our definition” as we move forward with the “hesitant music” of our lives

“If I can create myself, I’ll be able to amend myself.”

“Re-establishing myself in myself like this always comes to pass”.

He celebrates “Invisible mending”.

The minds procedures of forgiveness and repair.

The greatest poetry is written at the borders of what can be said. As this stanza on persevering and resurrecting and restoring oneself through the ups and downs of life while never losing your internal melody …

“Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream. Have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the groves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you”.  Sheng-Yang

The photograph above is from an amazing oasis in Chicago is the Poetry Foundation library which holds the largest collection of poetry books in the United States. You can have the library on your phone by downloading the app from here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/mobile-app

You can access poems by topic, by mood, by author and much more and it is all free.

2. Water.

Moving water is often symbolic of power and life. It can reputedly heal the sick and the lame, restore youth, confer fertility, dissolve sin, and so on.

It is an alchemy of thermal simulation that leaves one clean and pure and reconciles mind and body.

Flowing water whether it be rainfall, a stream, a river, or the tides of a lake or ocean has a certain timelessness to its biological rhythms.

P Walton wrote in the philosophy of water:

The three key lessons that can be drawn from this are humility, harmony and openness.

Humility: water stays low in the river, yet it is a life-giving force.

Harmony: water does not fight against its surroundings, it works with them to find a course.

Openness: water is open to change: gas, liquid, solid. It adapts and alters its form accordingly.

3. Wabi-Sabi

Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things that is unconventional.  

It is a philosophy of repair and therefore real life for it does not have perfection or ideal as a goal

Wabi refers to a way of life, a spiritual path, the inward, the subjective, a philosophical construct. It is about “space”.

Sabi refers to material objects, art, and literature, the outward the objective an aesthetic ideal, it is about “time”.

4. Kintsugi

Kintsugi is a Japanese repair technique that takes ceramic destruction and makes a broken object into a new entity. It leaves clear bold visible lines with the appearance of solid gold. A kintsugi repair speaks of individuality and uniqueness, fortitude and resilience, and the beauty to be found in survival. Kintsugi leads us to a respectful acceptance of hardship and aging.

Kintsugi has in it the Wabi-Sabi philosophy and its belief of beauty, knowledge and humanity arising from the scars and the repairs is sung by Leonard Cohen…

Ring the bells that can still ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in…

And the philosopher Rumi…

“The wound is the place where the light enters you”

5.Gardens

In the Charlevoix region of Quebec there lies a private garden which covers more than 20 acres and is called Les Quatre Vents ( The Four Winds). It is considered amongst the finest private gardens in the world (it is opened a few times a year to the public).

The garden was created by one person, Francis Cabot, as his life work that blends creativity and passion and it is simply the most breathtaking places one can imagine.

Francis Cabot believed that gardens are like art and have the power to change you. And unlike other art, which may affect you differently over time, because you have changed over time, a garden is itself always changing. Francis designed his garden to lift the soul of people who walked through it. To help them grow and repair and heal.

He wanted us to come out different after the experience.

Here is a peek at Les Quatre Vents…

One prescription for the pressures and challenges we face is to take a walk in a garden.

Regardless, it is key to remind ourselves of Francis Cabot’s belief that every individual is creative and we have a garden within ourselves that we need to tend to so that we can heal, self-repair and always bloom…

6. Untying vs Cutting.

Sometimes we cause damage to ourselves and our relationships by making hasty decisions, or having litmus tests with which we judge an entire person based on a single opinion or act. In doing so we cut harshly, end abruptly, or shut down angrily.

If something has to end it is better to untie then to cut.

When we cut both sides of the string or rope get frayed but when we untie things both sides remain intact.

And in the gradualness of the act we may find that we did not want to untie in the first place or we leave things in such a way that they can be retied in the future.

Sometimes repair means not creating situations that need repair.

My new book Rethinking Work is in production and available for pre-order. If you can order one or more. Here is more about the book all the ordering options ( Porchlight for significant discounts for 25 or more) : https://rishadtobaccowala.com/rethinking-work