A Star Wars Object Shows Us How To Embrace 2021
The broken mask of the movie villain Kylo Ren is a reference to an ancient Japanese art, whose philosophy is particularly relevant in times of adversity.
You’re at home, in your kitchen, holding a bowl.
Suddenly, it slips from your hands, falls on the floor, and breaks into pieces. What do you do? Do you throw the bowl away, or do you fix it?
There is actually a third possibility. Can you guess?
In the last Star Wars trilogy, the main villain is called Kylo Ren. The first time he appears on screen, he is wearing a mask. In the saga, a villain wearing a black mask is already a symbol in itself.
But something interesting happens to that mask. In the second episode of the trilogy, it gets smashed into pieces. Surprisingly, in the final episode, Kylo Ren comes back with the mask on. The mask has been repaired, with red glue tying together the broken pieces.
Many fans tried to guess the meaning of these red lines that look like blood veins, until movie director J. J. Abrams revealed the influence behind this aesthetic choice:
It is like that classic Japanese process of taking ceramics and repairing them — how the breaks define the beauty of the piece as much as the original itself. There’s something about this mask that tells his history.
Back to your kitchen. What do you do? Get rid of your broken bowl, or try to fix it?
As J. J. Abrams explains, you have a third option — you can choose to embellish the bowl. This is the Japanese art of kintsukuroi.
Kintsukuroi means to repair with gold. You mix glue and gold dust, and you fix the bowl with it. The result will be a renewed bowl, proudly displaying its past weaknesses turned into shining ornaments.
Wait a minute. How is this approach to repairing broken objects related to the topic of this newsletter, the mind and its mysterious ways of working?
Well, it turns out that the kintsukuroi concept can be applied beyond physical objects.
The best way to see it could be by turning to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote a book called Antifragile.
Traditionally, fragility is opposed to solidity. But, according to Taleb, this is a mistake. A fragile object loses value when it receives a shock, whereas a solid thing is simply unaffected by shocks.
Therefore, the opposite of a fragile thing should therefore be something that gains value from a shock. That’s what Taleb calls antifragile.
If you’re struggling to imagine what could that look like, a mythological figure embodies this concept of antifragility: the Lernaean Hydra. Every time you chop one of her heads, two heads would regrow.
Imagine a very social person, someone who loves to be surrounded by people. A person who is great at bonding with her colleagues, who gets energized by interacting with others.
What would happen if that person was forced to stay isolated for multiple weeks? If that person has a fragile mindset, such a constraint will be a pain to live with, because her social strength will become a weakness in a context of solitude.
On the opposite, here’s what could happen to her with an antifragile mindset. This very social person could leverage this unexpected constraint, and try to make the most out of it. Maybe by learning to enjoy the pleasures of being alone, not constantly interrupted by others.
Chop the social head off? Two heads would grow back: the social head, who would rebirth once the constraint would be lifted, and the alone head, who didn’t exist before. The blow would have been an opportunity to become stronger.
Now, concretely, how can you apply such a concept to your daily life?
The process is to ask yourself three sequential questions:
What is frustrating me the most, right now?
What is the opportunity hidden behind this frustration?
How could I benefit from that opportunity?
These questions might not be natural, at first. Be patient with yourself. Allow some time to pass by before you start to find some answers. The opportunities are there, but your brain may not yet be used to seeing them.
Despite our best hopes, 2021 is likely to offer some moments of frustration. Developing the mental habit of flipping these moments into opportunities can change the way you’ll remember this year.
Every two weeks, I write an article to explain how the mind works, usually through a comparison that everyone can relate to.
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Thank you to Olivier Courtois, Elise Stern, Tristan Bochu, Jean-Baptiste Vieille, Carmen Valtierra, Maxime Mario, Julien Lafitte, Ayça Sevkal-Guyot, Renan Devillieres, Maël Berkouk, Tom McCallum and Anthony Diao for reading early drafts of this article.