Kintsukuroi &

Kintsugi – Explore the Beautiful Art of Japanese Broken Pottery <– For context.

I had a dream last night. I was back on the ship. I haven’t had a dream like this for a long time. Not since, I went back to her. My friend Will and I traveled to Italy, walked the streets of Rome, drove hundreds of miles to find the small town with more echoes of the US Navy than presence. The feeling I had when I walked up to her was the same feeling I’d expect a person to have going on a spiritual journey.

The duty, the honor, the kinship. The service, the things that we are told about purpose and service. The life we have that we give away or the life we have they take. They take it and we give it.

It is true and from my point of view, it is true in our lives across the board. If we work in service of our country and our community or we work in service of our wives, our family. The service, the bond, the sacrifice, the purpose behind these is what we carry in faith. Faith of something, sometimes faith in G-d.

We are taught to be driven by faith and purpose. These concepts push us or allow ourselves to be pushed to extremes that go beyond our own known limitations. The Navy along with the other military organizations are called “the service.”

If you “served” or if you “serve” is the premise. This service becomes a test, a trial, a driver, a succubus, and precious memories. The things you did, the things you saw, the person you may have been, the person you were, the person you remember.

For so many of us, we had troubles before service.

The pot is cracked but it still works. The pot is chipped but it holds liquid. The pot is not damaged beyond repair, it just needs a little care.

The pot is shiny; it is a vessel. It is glass, reflective, it is strong but weak, it is hard but expand and contract just enough.

When we are born, we are put on contract. We didn’t know, we are taught to be something. We are taught morality, the idea of right and wrong. Nature doesn’t tell you what is right, the rules of nature are just boundaries. Humans teach each other what is right and wrong. At least, what the body of society thinks is right and wrong.

So, we sacrifice, in the words, the emotions, the body, all of it for what we believe is not just right for us but what we are taught is right for all. There is a promise at the end of heaven. If we did “all the things” the way that we were meant to do them, we will be rewarded.

The thing is, we aren’t rewarded here on earth though simple acts of kindness and the idea of right, we aren’t rewarded in that sense, but we are inherently broken down and ripped apart.

The reason these two things came together for me at least in thought has a lot to do with a recent trip I made to Canada. While I was there, I was soaking in art and seeing beautiful architecture from our not so distant past. While I was walking the streets, looking through the windows and walking into studios, I saw beautiful construction of color and canvas.

The things that spoke to me were more whimsical and colorful. The talented artists, they can see the world and reconstruct it with precision and beauty that takes years to master. At the same time, I could see the special and distinct quality of their art that made it theirs.

Unique, different but something familiar. Isn’t this what we are anyways? While there, I heard about the sailors on the USS Lincoln. I was looking to ignore it all, I didn’t want to pay attention to it until I heard the news that our most senior leaders said that they weren’t at sea long enough or … worse.

Then I realized, I was paying attention. The young people on this ship, they are at sea and some of them may not even see the light of day for long periods of time. Their lives are consumed but busy work and stretches of exercise and practice. While the fat old cats with their legs up on the stands, smoke their proverbial stogies and laugh because it isn’t them.

From here, we have the divergence, we have victims, not that we need to call them that because after all they chose this life. They knew what it was all about before they joined. They knew the risks. All of it feels jumbled but it isn’t really.

We are born, we are told, taught, we become something that fits into this common idea. We are fed concepts, things that we believe are true even if we don’t see them. The younger we are the more abstract and as we get older and we search deeper, we need meaning and we need understanding. Along the way, we are hit from one side or another. We are strapped in a chair and our ears are held open, our mouths are punched shut and we are fed knowledge. We are fed pain and suffering through the things that nature owns and that society has no method or means to control. We call it “acts of G-d” but that doesn’t resonate with me.

Some of us are broken down and rebuilt into something better for society. Some of us are broken down and not rebuilt, we just live in pieces and parts. Some of us use others to shield ourselves, devaluing the lives of others while we sit as high and far as we can from danger. The fact is, we all can’t hide from nature. We will all eventually answer to the call of some form of suffering.

In between all of this, if we pay enough attention, we will find beauty and peace for a moment. While these are fleeting, they exist in most situations. Even a person trapped in a cell can have a quiet moment of peace.

For those of us who either rebuild ourselves or have help to rebuild, we may emerge better than we were but the scars and damage is apparent. It is still there. When building muscle, shaping the body, eating healthy, there is ripping, shredding, cutting, all these to build us back to something and this something should be and could be better.

In the churn of all these thoughts, in the center of it all, is a father willing to take his sons place at sea. This father willing to trade out himself for his son. This is what we know, this is what we believe to be right. This is what it is to love. Many fathers would give their lives to save their sons or daughters. Now, look, I said “father” but I know for sure mothers would too. This is about understanding the feeling.

We are taught in so many ways and so many conditions. When we do what we believe we are meant to do, we make the things we call sacrifice. Not what others may believe but what we know ourselves in our own personal space, our own mind that we made sacrifice or we believe we did. The gold flows through our veins and fills in the cracks. We may heal through the knowledge that we did our very best and it was enough. We were enough. Maybe we always were enough and we didn’t need to do this. Maybe the pain and suffering is unnecessary.

At the start of this journey, there was you and you were perfect. You were beautiful, a blank slate of limitless potential.

At the end of this journey, there is you, and you were perfect, you were beautiful and your limitless potential never mattered because you always were what you were meant to be, sacrifice, no sacrifice.

The pot is full, the pot is empty, broken, rebuilt, scraped up, damaged, working or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that our perception of purpose, service, life is what we know based on what we are taught, there is opportunity as long as we are breathing and conscious to learn more about what it means or what it doesn’t. This is up to you.

Last week, I said out loud to mom, “if you are around, I don’t know it” and for days, I have been getting feathers everywhere I go, right in front of me, in my path, so as not to miss or avoid.

We could say that I am just noticing or maybe the possibilities are not limited to simply what we are told.

All these things were coming together this week and along the way thought a bit. I hope you have a good week.

Happy Sunday

This post is dedicated to Lynne Chernow. Lynne and I met at leadership conferences and would talk about life and service. She was inherently helpful, warm and kind.