I came across this picture and I was struck with emotion, this was me back in 2010, getting ready to be admitted to the Bar of the District of Columbia. A part of me remembers how hopeful, stubborn, naive, arrogant, and “green” I was in this season. I had always been incredibly smart, I was always unique because my mind could process tons and tons of information at warped speeds, I had the best photographic memory, so if I wanted to, I could do fairly well. A few months earlier I had learned that I scored a 174 on the MBE, placing me in the top 2% of US bar exam takers, and that coupled with being a PhD student and being selected to be an Examiner for the FL Bar, had me feeling arrogant and untouchable. I felt glossy, polished, like a beautiful ceramic pot that was highly regarded.I remember how I felt in this picture, and honestly that feeling makes me cringe now 11 years later. I look at this young woman and I see a person I knew or met before, but a person I no longer know or recognize or can relate to. This person feels like a stranger, someone disassociated from me, my physical body. So much of who I am has changed in the past 11-12 years, my views on life, my views on people, and just the way I move through life seems starkly opposed to the way this young woman moved through life. It’s true, I always say if you knew me in 2011, you don’t know me in 2021. Life happened between 2010 and 2021, and “life” changed me.
I was on a coaching call last week, where my coach told me about a Japanese term, Kintsugi; she said “Iyandra, where you are now in your life, your evolution is very much like Kintsugi. ” Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, in embracing the rock bottoms and the failures, in embracing the grief and the low points of life’s journey, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of pottery. Every break is unique and instead of repairing an item of pottery like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the “scars” as a part of the design. WOW, I thought, that is me, the broken ceramic dish repaired and put back together with gold.
I wonder if this young woman knew just how many obstacles and failures and lessons were in her path, if she would have been more prepared for it. But then again, it was the process she was about to embark upon of being broken and broken again that resulted in her repair being laced with the golden veil of growth, golden veil of development, golden veil of resilience and grit. While IQ is relatively fixed, grit and resilience is developed through journeys like my own.Using Kintsugi as a metaphor for my life and the journey I have taken over the past 11 years to heal, develop, and grow has taught me an important lesson: In the process of repairing things that have broken, we actually create something so much more unique, so much more beautiful, so much more graceful and valuable, and so much more resilient.
So while this young woman may have been glossy and appeared brand new out of the package, and nicely polished, the woman I am today did not and could never have realized my full potential, cultivated an arsenal of gratitude, received incredible humility, and became strong like armor had I not went through all the tough times of this journey called life.
So cheers to the pictures that show us what we used to be, but even more cheers to the tough times that make us who we are.
