Kintsugi: Looking forward to looking back

Almost two years ago I gave my icebreaker about 'who I am'. In some respects, not much has changed: where I came from, my values and my strengths. In other respects, everything has changed. I am happy that I am here to give a first-hand account of my 2-year journey. I’ve heard incredible, brave, vulnerable speeches over the last two years, and I was always reminded of what the famous psychologist Carl Rogers said: "that which is most personal is most universal".

My journey to get to this point started about five years ago when I was diagnosed with the condition called Mast cell activation syndrome or MCAS. Don’t Google it, lest you will self-diagnose. Wait at least two weeks! Any physical or mental symptoms you have ever experienced, will ever experience or can possibly not even imagine experiencing can be a symptom of MCAS.

MCAS

If most chronic diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol should be treated with care, then MCAS is potentially the radioactive, toxic substance where you wear a protective lead suit and gloves before you even talk about it. In my case, it was like trying to land a plane with 20 instruments all screaming for your attention. You're blindfolded and there is a crosswind blowing at 100km/h... and you get ONE chance at a perfect landing.?

As I titled my Level 3 speech 'stress: friend or foe', little did I know that stress and an overactive nervous system were the root cause of my condition. Essentially my car's accelerator was stuck in full throttle and my brake was broken.

MCAS has only been formally acknowledged as a condition since 2007. MCAS is actually extremely prevalent It is estimated that up to 20% of the population has some form of the condition to some extent. That’s one in five people.?

Last year came to a head when, after trying for years to get to the bottom of this condition, overconfident doctors, ignorant specialists, and a complexity of this condition which I cannot begin to describe, I ended up sick, malnourished, underweight and overconfident. Thank goodness I was overconfident because if I knew how hard it was going to be, I wouldn’t have started on this journey. Ignorance by the medical profession kept me sick for years, and it is with this speech that I hope to bring awareness to this very very treatable and manageable condition. I was alone in this. If a doctor ever tells you it’s “all in your head”, tell them two things:

1) Your head is still part of your body?

2) It doesn’t make the problem go away. It simply moves the problem to a different organ

I have MCAS. But I don’t suffer from MCAS. Far from it. In fact, I thrive because of it, not in spite of it.

KINTSUGI

Life is an artform no one of us ever perfect, but the Japanese can help us understand how to not only survive but also thrive in adversity. To show you what I mean, I have to tell you about Kintsugi.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken areas with glue mixed with powdered gold, platinum, or silver. Probably originated from the Japanese art of breaking things called tameshiwari,

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Kintsugi is the art of making something more beautiful than it was before.?For me, Kintsugi is the art of finding opportunity in adversity.

TWO PATHWAYS

When I was 18 years old, I told a psychologist about a niggling gut feeling that I just could not shake. A short and long pathway for my life. The short pathway I could see ending at around 26 years old, not knowing how or why. The other one, I could see being long and prosperous, provided I could manage some difficult bottleneck in the not-too-distant future. I could not have imagined how accurate this premonition would be. Somehow I managed the short pathway. While being grateful to still be alive after 26 and being really grateful to be alive at 30, I acquired one chronic condition after another.

My Kintsugi bowl was broken. But was it mendable? Was I going to make it through the bottleneck, or not?

Like the Kintsugi, we can become more whole after being broken, because there is always opportunity in adversity.

After a lot of trials and errors and failures, and research, I am here. I made it through the short pathway and the bottleneck I foresaw. The Toastmasters pathway is part of the long prosperous pathway.

I wish I could talk more about all the things I’ve learned and how it’s changed me. I don’t believe the Kintsugi bowl can be made whole again if we don’t see opportunity in adversity.

? I’ve learned to ALWAYS move toward my values. With my values of insatiable curiosity and lifelong learning, to get to the root cause of my condition, I had to learn about biology, chemistry, molecular biology, genetics, physiology and nutrition. Within that adversity was the most incredible opportunity. I was like a kid in a candy store when you tell the kid, “if you don’t eat as many sweets as you can, there will be trouble!”. I titled my Level 2 speech ‘You don’t need to know it all’. In my case, I needed to learn a lot, but I still didn’t need to know it all.

? I’ve learned that much like guitar players don’t stop playing when calluses form on the tips of their fingers to make it easier and less painful to play, I learned to callus my mind. Make it strong and look forward to adversity. I titled my Level 4 speech, the obstacle is the way. There will always be obstacles for me like all of us. But now I constantly try to move towards my values while dealing with adversity. It’s then that you see the opportunities. Now when I see adversity, I see the opportunity to learn and get stronger, so that the next adversity will be music to my ears. That we should all try and get to the point where you can say: You ‘can’t hurt me'.

? I’ve learned that adverse emotions are an opportunity to reframe them into what you want them to mean. I’ve learned that emotions are not set in stone. Rather than seeing adversity in public speaking, there’s an opportunity.?Instead of experiencing the anxiety, fear and apprehension, I used to call “stage fright” I now see the excitement of sharing information, gaining valuable feedback for personal development, and sharing something worthwhile, which I now call ‘exuberance’, defined as “being full of energy, excitement, and cheerfulness”.

? I’ve learned that…Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to think for himself, and he doesn’t need to fish. He can consider all the other several possibilities available to him for sustenance.

? I’ve learned that nobody, --nobody-- has life figured out

THE FULL CATASTROPHE

The psychologist and meditation guru Jon Kabat Zin says that a full life is only possible by living what he calls Full Catastrophe Living

At times, we encounter uncertainty, stress, pain, loss, grief, and sadness, but also a tremendous potential for joy, connection, love, and affiliation.? And all of that is ‘the full catastrophe.’? It’s not just the good stuff.? It’s everything.? And the question is, “Can we love it, can we live inside of it in ways that actually enliven us and allow us to be fully human?

Now, having learned all that, I pick up the pieces and make something better than it’s been before. Resilience means being able to get back mentally, physically and emotionally bak to where you’ve been before the popo hit the fan. But let’s go one step further. Becoming better than you’ve every been. It’s called being antifragile. The adversity has provided me with an opportunity to become antifragile.

I leave you with this: A physicist whom I admire, Sean Carroll said it best:

At the end of the day, or the end of your life, it doesn’t matter so much that you were happy much of the time. Wouldn’t you rather have a good story to tell?