X is for X #AtoZChallenge

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the last week of the #Blogging from A to Z  April Challenge 2021. My theme this year is based on the Japanese concept of Ichigo Ichie which means--"What we are experiencing right now will never happen again. And therefore, we must value each moment like a beautiful treasure."

Today, we look at a section of the book titled: 'The Cracked Pots."

I hope you'll enjoy being here.

Thank you.

Arti

In The Book of Ichigo Ichie, I came across an old Indian parable that I've heard before.

This illustration of 'A Water Carrier or Bhestie', however, 

is borrowed from www.oldindianarts.in

to help me with the retelling.

According to the parable, a water bearer carried two large pots of water to his master's house every day. One pot was perfect while the other had several cracks. As a result, the amount of water delivered by each pot was unequal. 

The cracked pot was ashamed of its inadequacy and one day decided to speak to the water bearer: 'I'm ashamed of myself. I want to apologise to you. Because of my cracks you can deliver only half my load and get paid only half the money.'

The water bearer smiled and told the pot to notice the path carefully on their way back. The pot noticed many beautiful flowers all along the path. 

"Have you noticed the flowers grow only on your side of the road?" the water bearer pointed out. "I've always known you are cracked...I planted seeds along the route we take, and you have watered them each day without noticing...If you weren't the way you are, with all your cracks, I would still be walking through a desert."

*****

As usual, I picked up the hefty Concise Oxford English dictionary today to look for  a word I'd be able to use in the title. I wanted something that would fit with the thought I had for today's post. 

I find rifling through pages of a dictionary yields more than searching online. A flick of a page and you're burrowing in different galaxies with all the back information on how that word came to be. Nothing can replicate the lost and found feeling of holding and reading a physical dictionary.

Occupying mere two pages of this heavy edition, X looked sparse. Then it didn't.

I had hoped to find something that would fit the idea of exclusion; a word that describes something being discarded because it's not perfect. I didn't find anything.

I was about to turn to E (for ex instead of  x) when this caught my eye and I smiled. I 'd found my X. 

Lying next to each other were these two (among other) uses of a cross-shaped written symbol

¬ to indicate an incorrect answer. ¬to symbolize a kiss 

Entries starting with the 24th letter of the alphabet occupy the least amount of space in the dictionary, but X turned out to be quite extraordinary on its own. Don't you agree? 

As a photography enthusiast, I often find that the pictures I make don't match the image in my head. Nine out of ten times, it's due to my limited technical knowhow. I don't like to read manuals. Doing is the way I learn. It's not the most efficient method but it suits me. Trial and error, they call it.

A lot of the times, a lot of my clicks have to be discarded. But, sometimes, the out of focus, blurry images like the cracked pot, turn out to be more beautiful than the perfect ones.

What do you think? 

So, next time, before you mark a mistake with an X, think about the water bearer's seeds and the kiss that lies right next to it on a page in an old, loved dictionary.

Trust your creative process. Be kind. The electric bulb lit up after many wrong turns. Turn your deserts into gardens with love, grace and forgiveness.

Is there an X you'd like to share?

Has an out of focus picture, a discarded project, an unloved piece of art made you jump with joy because in its incomplete, imperfect state it illuminated your stories and myriad mysteries more perfectly?

You know I'd love to hear, if you'd like to share.

This year, I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z  powered by theblogchatter.com