How Beautiful the Broken
On Honoring Imperfection
How beautiful the broken, the scuffed, the flawed, the chipped. I love an old piece of furniture, with layers of patina you can't find in something new. A wall with ivy climbing up it, clinging the cracks in the paint. And what about old fences, worn by years of fending off rain and wind? Let’s not forget the rust that singes the edges of a tractor long-left in the field. The world keeps showing us its age, its capacity to endure.
And yet we are always looking for the markers of perfection, in ourselves and in the world. There is a tradition in many cultures—-from Punjabi to Japanese to Amish to Irish to Chinese —-to include a deliberate flaw in a work of art. Sometimes it is said that it’s meant to remind us as humans that only God is perfect. I believe it’s also that we as makers know that our art exists to mirror the world, and that to do that fully we have to show the brokenness around us, as well as inside of us. And perhaps, as those traditional artisans intuited, there is a kind of danger in cleaving to the ideal without spending time honoring the flawed.
I believe in building a kind of altar to imperfection, to the cracked and nicked, the bruised and broken. Once, I even kept a broken porcelain rabbit––one I loved when it was whole–– on my actual altar, lest I forget. While the world is always reminding us of its chaos and suffering, I believe it matters tremendously that we have a way to integrate and invite brokenness into our lives and art in a way that marries it to resilience, to beauty.
Otherwise, we expect the poem to be perfect, so we don't write it. We expect ourselves to be perfect, so we don't take the risk of trying something new. We are afraid to open our hearts because they’ve been broken. We think our stories should be somehow different than they are: our homes, bodies, relationships––everything.
What if we thought things should be broken? That brokenness reveals the sacredness at the center—or, at least, the mystery. I sometimes try that on for size, walk around thinking, even for a day, that all my mistakes were necessary ones. That my life is beautifully flawed, as is the world. Not that we shouldn’t try to change things, to attempt repair, to build anew. That’s part of our job description. But what if we kept a broken cup, a cracked vase, a painting with a visible flaw just to remember.
To Dive Deeper
I’m excited to offer an upcoming class on how we can integrate this practice into our awareness and our poems. It’s a five week craft webinar that meets on Zoom, Sundays. Details on my website. All sessions will be recorded. You don’t even have to be a poet to join! I’d love to keep having this conversation with you. : )
As a Jew, I have always left a small part undone as a way of showing that creation is not yet complete. It's also a way of acknowledging the importance of the Temple in Jewish practice.
Lovely piece of writing Danusha. Looking forward to the workshop this summer!