I had three conversations this week. One with a colleague, one with a furniture repairer, and one with a physicist who’s been dead for decades. They fit together somehow… and this blog post is the result.
Story 1
Lydia Cao is a friend, and colleague (faculty at the University of Toronto) and one of the co-hosts of the Silver Lining for Learning webinar/podcast. Last Saturday, before recording our podcast, we were chatting about names, why Indians have such long names, and just out of curiosity I asked her about her Chinese name. Lydia said her Chinese name meant “Flawed Jade” which I thought was a beautiful name.
Lydia laughed, and indicated that she wasn’t sure that was the case. In fact, growing up, she had asked her mother “Why can’t I be a perfect jade?” Doesn’t every parent want their child to be perfect? According to Lydia, her mother said that it was that imperfection that made her unique.
I told her that I agreed with her mother. It was a beautiful name. Jade is common, but flawed jade is what’s precious. Tell your mother, I said, it’s lovely.
Story 2
Growing up, we had a table in our family that my parents loved to show off. The table was extraordinary, its legs carved from an inverted tea-leaf shrub, the trunk and branches cut and flipped to create an organic base. It gleamed with a beautiful golden finish, its circular tabletop perfectly complementing the organically twisted legs below. My father had acquired it when he was posted in Assam early in his career, yes, that is where Assam tea comes from, and it had been part of my life for as long as I could remember, which probably meant that it was older than me. The table had followed us through every chapter of our life: from Assam to Mizoram, then to the Delhi, and finally to Bhubaneswar, where my parents settled after my father’s retirement.
This past December we finally sold the house in Bhubaneswar, my parents having passed away a few years ago. But there was no way we could let that table go. So, we planned on shipping it Phoenix. And wow… was that a process. The amount of paperwork required was insane and it cost way more than I thought it should. That said, we packed it as well as we could have and sent it off. It took a couple of weeks to get here but arrive it did.
Except when I unpacked it, I found that the top of the table had broken in transit! It was heartbreaking.
It sat there, in the garage, for months, guilting me, till I took the effort to find someone who could repair it. It was dropped off a couple of weeks ago, and last Sunday, the day after my conversation with Lydia, we went to pick it up.
When I saw the repaired table, my heart sank.
The top of the table had been colored dark-dark-brown. One would even say black. Gone was the wonderful and distinctive rich golden color. We had told the person repairing it that we didn’t care if the crack showed. That was part of the story of the table now, the mark of its many journeys. But I guess the crack bothered him so much, or he had forgotten what I had said, that they stained the entire top dark brown to hide it.
The (unfinished) journey of the table.
It is now being sanded to see if we can get back that original color.
Story 3
While driving back from repairman’s home, I was reminded of something the physicist Feynman had written, trying to explain symmetry and broken symmetry in physics. Once I got home I dug out the quote. It is from a lecture titled, “Symmetry in Physical Law,” part of the 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University. These lectures were then put together in a book titled, “The Character of Physical Law.” Here is the quote that had come to mind:
So our problem is to explain where symmetry comes from. Why is nature so nearly symmetrical? No one has any idea why. The only thing we might suggest is something like this: There is a gate in Japan, a gate in Neiko, which is sometimes called by the Japanese the most beautiful gate in all Japan; it was built in a time when there was great influence from Chinese art. This gate is very elaborate, with lots of gables and beautiful carving and lots of columns and dragon heads and princes carved into the pillars, and so on. But when one looks closely he sees that in the elaborate and complex design along one of the pillars, one of the small design elements is carved upside down; otherwise the thing is completely symmetrical. If one asks why this is, the story is that it was carved upside down so that the gods will not be jealous of the perfection of man. So they purposely put an error in there, so that the gods would not be jealous and get angry with human beings.
Perfection was for the gods. We could only aspire to it!
Driving home from the repair shop, these three moments suddenly felt connected. Lydia’s name, my table’s hidden crack, Feynman’s deliberate imperfection, all pointing to something deeper, maybe. Three different moments, spanning decades and continents, but somehow all hinting the same thing.
There’s something deeply human about wanting to sand away the cracks, paint over the damage, choose the “perfect” jade. But the flaws don’t diminish beauty – they create it. They’re what make something irreplaceable, unrepeatable, uniquely itself. That is why my immediate response to Lydia was that I loved her Chinese name and why I was so saddened seeing the dark brown tabletop. And maybe why that story from Feynman has stayed with me so long.
Maybe perfection is boring. Maybe imperfections are markers of what make us unique and special.
Common jade is just a stone. A perfect table is just furniture. A symmetrical gate is just architecture. But flawed jade carries character. A cracked table carries a family’s journey across oceans. An inverted design element carries the humility of its makers.
End note 1: There is some ambiguity about which gate Feynman was speaking of, since there are so many beautiful gates in Japan. Some internet sources (for instance this one) suggest it is the magnificent Y?meimon Gate in Nikk?, Japan.
End note 2: As I was discussing these stories with Claude, I realized there was another Japanese connection. The Japanese have an art called kintsugi: repairing broken pottery with gold, making the cracks the most beautiful part of the piece. The philosophy behind it is that breakage and repair are part of an object’s history, not something to disguise. The cracks become the most beautiful part, literally highlighted in gold. It’s connected to the Japanese aesthetic concepts of mottainai (regret over waste) and mono no aware (the bittersweet awareness of impermanence). I wish I had known that word when I talked to the table repairer. This idea did make to the title image of this post.
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