I recently received an email from my company that stated, in order to upgrade my computer to Windows 10, I had to install additional RAM onto my laptop. As I am a remote employee, I had two options: send my laptop back and have them do it, or, have them send me the RAM, and attempt to do it myself.

Being slightly smarter than the average bear, I decided it would be unproductive to send the computer back and opted to do it myself. The IT dept sent me a YouTube video from the laptop manufacturer, saying it would be “about a 10 minute job”, and all I would need in terms of tools, was a small Phillips head screwdriver for the tiny screws on the base on the laptop.

The RAM arrived the next day, and I rolled up my sleeves, gripped my teeny Phillips screwdriver, and pressed play on the YouTube video, carefully queued on my iPad, ready for the 10-minute job.

In less than five minutes, I managed to crack the entire bottom of the laptop, from the Ethernet port, almost clear over to the battery area.

The gasp might have been audible all the way to the company HQ. I slowly backed away from the laptop, and immediately contacted IT. They told me to send them my laptop, and they would overnight a new laptop, already upgraded, to me.

True to their word, the new laptop arrived the next morning. I gleefully booted it up, patting myself on the back, because, prior to fiddling with my old laptop, I backed everything up to the cloud, so I would have everything at my fingertips on the new machine. Or so I thought.

To my horror, I realized that, among other things, I did not export all my bookmarks in Chrome. Not a big deal under normal circumstances, but my Chrome bookmarks bar would give Barnes & Noble a run for its money. We are talking hundreds of bookmarks, neatly categorized and filed into dozens of folders. So, I made a desperate please to IT to see if, by any chance, when they received by battled and bruised laptop, if they could, by the grace of God, boot it up (if it would) and export my bookmarks. Silently, I cursed myself, but continued to try to set up my new “workstation” to resemble my old one.

However, nice as the new laptop appeared to be, things weren’t working in my favor: network connections were not installing, the connection was slow, and more than once I had to restart the machine, only to watch the “spinning wheel of death” each time, sometimes for an hour or more.

(Side note: throughout this process, I had never really used my iPad for work, or anything mildly productive, and was finding out what a god-send the magnetically-attaching keyboard was becoming. Still seemed weird to swipe the screen rather than use a mouse to move around, but I’m getting the hang of it.)

IT offered to send me yet another laptop, and mentioned, in passing, that they actually could boot up and run my mangled laptop just fine, and, recovered my glorious bookmarks. So, I asked them if, perhaps, they could finish the job I attempted to start on my old machine, install the RAM, update it to Windows 10, and send it back to me, I even make a joke about how I would buy some gold washi tape and perform a sort of ritualistic “kintsugi” on the crack on the bottom.

For those who have never heard of it, kintsugi is an ancient Japanese art of repairing broken items with a glue-like substance that contains traces of gold. Usually done to pottery, the art is meant to honor the piece, and celebrate the journey represented by the imperfections, rather than try to hide them.

And, what started as a sort of joke to celebrate the battle of my computer against the odds (the odds being that I pulverized it), the gesture has evolved into a strange symbolism for so many things that have been going on recently in my life; from learning of some bad rumors going on about me (stay tuned for THAT post), to my recent decision to stop dyeing my hair (you guessed it, another post coming soon) to revisiting just about everything I knew or thought about myself, as I charge into my 50’s (more future posts).

Upon reflection this ancient art means more to me than a simple “hey, that’s cool” learning moment, to be almost a symbol to all of us as we age: why do we so desperately try to hide the imperfections that life bestows on us (grey hair, sagging skin, wrinkles, etc)? Rather, why don’t we celebrate the beauty in these superficial “imperfections” as a symbol of the experiences and wisdom we have acquired in this linear journey through life?

So, I pose it to you, dear readers: will you try to hide your perceived “imperfections” or will you “kintsugi” them, and celebrate your accomplishments?