You probably have gone for interviews before. You would also probably have heard of the conventional logic in regard to a popular interview question ”What are your weaknesses?” The ‘right’ way to answer it is not to deny that you don’t have flaws (because no one’s perfect) but to acknowledge 1-2 of your shortcomings and convince the interviewers how you are working on reducing the perceived inefficiencies they bring to your working life.
But what if we frame our weaknesses not as something embarrassing that we should mitigate, but as a starting point to conjure something unique and beautiful?
Previously, I wrote about attending a kintsugi workshop. For the uninitiated, kintsugi refers to the art of applying lacquer and gold paint on broken pottery pieces, accentuating the cracks and not throwing them away. The embellished pottery then becomes eye-catching, eliciting ‘Wow’ reactions and perhaps attracting more eyeballs than if it were unspoilt.
In nature, when irritants such as sand enter an oyster, it responds by secreting layers of a nacre (also known as mother-of-pearl) around the sand. No doubt, it takes years of consistency for the oyster to combat the irritants but it prevails in the end. We all know how it produces precious pearls, those shiny things that many normies fall hard for.
The irritant’s like an itch on our body - we desperately scratch it to make it go away. But nature has imbued the oyster with a way to embed the irritant and churn out attractive pearls.
In short, as kintsugi and pearls have shown, our flaws are not something that should evoke an immediate negative response. If we are willing to capitalise on our flaws, we may become more interesting and outstanding individuals than if we were to disregard them.
Have you ever experienced having your life enriched in spite of precisely because of your flaws?