Whole

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When I see something that has been mended but is still being used my heart does a joyful little dance. Sadly though, a piece of mended china, even if it looks almost exactly the same, will have little or no value except to its owner because we live in a world where perfection seems to be all that matters and this is a great shame. The challenging things that happen to us add value to us, change us, make us stronger, perhaps more empathetic, more resilient, transformed even, and with a story to tell and the same applies to objects we love.  When my daughter was a toddler she dropped the lid of this pretty pot which had once belonged to her great grandmother, and it shattered.  My immediate reaction was to chuck the whole thing away but instead my kind mother in law told us to carefully collect up all the pieces and she had it expertly mended for me. At 96, she comes from a generation which mended things when they broke; a habit we seem to have lost in only a couple of generations. This repair shows if you look closely but it's part of the history of this little pot and there is absolutely no reason why it shouldn't be used and enjoyed for many generations to come. How easy it would have been to gather it all up and throw it away because it was no longer perfect. But instead it sits there scarred, but still whole, like all of us.