I like a little ding. Ben Napier, HGTV’s “Home Town” show.
In his opening spiel for his home improvement show on HGTV with his wife, Erin, Napier acknowledges his passion for the “dings” found in old homes. As much as he is into renovating and restoring houses and building furniture, especially from old wood, he seeks the history buried in the “dings.”
He’s not the only one. A vendor at one of the biannual massive antiques shows in Round Top, Texas, told Roberta Messner, writing for Guideposts, “Chips and dents are where the story is.”
Old things - houses, furniture, china, people - all come with their own dings, chips and dents. That’s where their stories lie.
While Napier appreciates the dings he finds in his many projects, he’s not alone. There comes a time in any project when we have to let it go, regardless of any remaining dings. Things can always be improved.
Woody Allen once said that he never watched the openings of any of his movies. He explained that he attended the premier of his first show; and immediately, as the credits were rolling, he knew how he could have done it better.
Most artists agree with the filmmaker. There comes a point where one must let a project go, even knowing they maybe, with more time, they could have made changes for the better.
Most inanimate objects can also be made better, can be restored, and be improved. If people didn’t work to improve existing items, we’d still be traveling by horse and buggy and using candle light to read by. Of course, we Americans may have taken the bigger, better philosophy to the extreme when we demand newer, better upgrades of our electronics each year.
But the idea that no human being is perfect, that we all make mistakes or could do better, dates back to ancient civilizations and peoples. The first step comes in recognizing that perfection belongs to God alone and our responsibility is to try to live up to His standards.
The ancient Persians purposely wove a mistake into their now famous rugs to acknowledge the perfection of God and the imperfection of humans. It’s a tradition that continues in the modern making of many oriental rugs. And while machines, when they mess up, mess up greatly, a machine programed to weave a rug doesn’t have “mistake” woven into its system. The lack of a mistake diminishes the value of these modern floor coverings.
The Japanese take it a step further with their appreciation for wabi-sabi, “finding beauty in every aspect of imperfection in nature.” It is acknowledgment of things that are “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.”
The most visible manifestation of this concept is Kintsugi, the process of using gold to reassemble the pieces of broken pottery. By embracing flaws and imperfections, one can create a stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Highlighting the scars of brokenness in gold adds to both the beauty and the strength of the vessel.
Personally, I like my furniture to have stories to tell. Often as I watch TV in the living room, I’ll glance up, look around and smile when I remember the family stories surrounding me in our furnishings. I appreciate the links of each to the past and wonder if they will continue to the future.
For example, I usually notice first the marble top antique table we inherited from my mother. She was aghast when her grandmother, in Houston, one day pulled out all of her marble top furniture for the trash men to haul off. She wanted new. That may have been when my mother, in Dallas, went out and bought this antique since she knew she wouldn’t inherit one.
But even new pieces, with each ding over a lifetime, eventually develop stories of their own.
And like Allen, we all have experienced, in one way or another, the situation of letting go, publishing, airing, putting ourselves out for all to see. And while we may grimace when a flaw surfaces, we are reminded that we are not the perfect God; however, we are one of His creations trying to do our best to praise Him.
2022
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