Kintsugi

“So what happened yesterday?” Kerri asks. Kerri is my boss. She is four feet tall with the personality of someone who is a giant, one of those people who walks in a room and takes the whole thing over. You have to admire her for this. But if she was a man, we would call this little man syndrome. Which gives me pause.

We are sitting in the middle of the international terminal of the airport surrounded by tourists and next to Kanye, my co-worker, who is twenty-five and an aspiring fashion designer.

Kanye and I are close, we laugh through our shifts together and he reveals his vulnerabilities to me, his fears, his hopes, his dreams and I protect these.

Lately, his numbers have been down, and it has been affecting his self esteem. My numbers are high, last month I was ranked number one in the store for sales. Because we are a team, our personal numbers are really only as good as one anothers, or at least that is my mindset. A sale for the store only helps us all reach our store goal, so we have to work together, but also be fair and give credit where credit is due.

Kanye believes this too, but there’s an insatiable desire in him, lead by his ego, to have ownership over the success of the store and it frequently causes problems with…everyone else on the team but me, until now. I understand. I know that, especially for a man, especially in their mid twenties, success in any definition, monetary, relational, status, drives them because the world is constantly telling them that defines their worth. I get this, I am able to feel the unfair pressure of this.

“Yesterday I had a client,” I began, and when Kanye stayed silent, Kerri looking back and forth between us, waiting. I continued. “There was another client in the store as well, that was Kanyes, but he interjected in my sale and my client ended up choosing the bag he had suggested and showed for them.” I pause. In the rulebook, even if Kanye tried to help make a sale by becoming involved, because it is my client I would get the sale. I have helped my other co-workers with clients and not gotten the commission before, it is just the rules. You have to understand that your work will benefit someone else, but also benefit the team as a whole. And if you want to build a strong team, you have to be a strong team player. And if you show your counterparts you are willing to help and not reap the reward or credit directly, something in them changes and everyone elevates, more sales are made and everyone’s commission checks grow larger.

“Kanye and I had had a talk about how his numbers were down, and it was causing him to be a little down as well, so I told him, Kanye, take the sale. And he did, and afterwards instead of saying ‘thank you, Jenn’ he said, ‘this is what you were doing wrong with that sale.’” I looked at Kerri, as she closed her eyes and inhaled. “I was a little shocked,” I admitted, I looked at Kanye, “I was not expecting that from you,” I told him.

In real time, I had responded to Kanyes arrogant criticism by saying, “Kanye, I just gave you a 2.7k sale, one of the highest ticket prices in our store. I did not have to do that. You could just say thank you.” He became a bumbling mess, “I’m sorry, no I just, I yeah, no. I just want to teach you.”

In my head, I was quietly thinking no, I am about to teach you.

In front of Kerri, he begins to tell us about his eight years of sales experience and how he knows people need to be taught things and that he is the teacher of these things. He was losing the plot. People need to understand that when they do not listen to others, they are always going to lose the plot. It was as if I had written a chapter and he took pencil and erased it all only to write his version instead. A good writer is able to connect two different narratives and combine it into one story. One detailed, thorough, inclusive plot. A good human is able to do this as well.

“Well, I have thirty seven years of being a human being and I think your response was pretty…shit,” I told him flatly.

I continued. “Kanye, I know we talk a lot about your life and I know you are going through some hard times. My life though, which I do not talk about much, is that I am a single mom. I panic everyday about providing enough for Noah, I work everyday solely for him. Every sale I get is going towards a child. I did not have to give you that sale, but I was trying to shine light on you, show you support and good faith, and you were incredibly ungrateful. And you are sitting here now, instead of listening to me or apologizing, being defensive. You are speaking from your ego. And it is not helping you in this situation at all.”

Kerri is silent and she looks at Kanye. “Kanye, she did an incredibly generous thing, and when she even offered, you should have said no.”

“I do not need her help or her numbers, Im a great salesperson on my own,” is his response.

Kerri and I look at one another in a knowing way I am sure bond many many women together. This silly little bitch, the look says.

“Kanye you could have texted her an apology, you could have been waiting for her today to apologize, you could have spoken up and made things right,” Kerri tells him. “But you did not do those things,” she reminds him. “So where do we go from here?” she asks.

Kanye is silent so I speak up.

“After this conversation, I think you have shown yourself to me, so from now on we just stay in our own lane, we only work together one day a week, so we can be professional and perform, but I will not be doing that for you again. I have to protect myself,” I say. And it is the last part I think that got to him.

I have to protect myself from you. Because you are no longer safe, or trusted, or respected really.

He begins to cry.

Usually, if I am witness to people crying, I also cry. But this time I did not feel any of the emotion that should have been the heartbeat behind his tears.

“But we were so close, how can this one little thing make you say something like that?”

“Because this one thing was not little. It showed a lot to me about how you will treat me, and I have to stand up for myself. This is a boundary I am putting up, and it is because of you. You cannot blame me for protecting my energy, my time, and my money,” I tell him as he weeps.

“I do not think poorly of you Kanye, I root for you, but behavior has consequences,” I say annoningly, like I am standing in front of a chalkboard, my hair in a bun, wearing glasses and making scientific charts of the reactions that occur when you add a certain chemical to another chemical.

He continues to cry and defend his behavior because of his hard upbringing and all the battles he is fighting in his own life.

“This happens with everyone Kerri, everyone treats me this way,” he is pleading with her, tears all over his face. The victim. Everyone else an enemy out to bring him down. Except I had given him a sale I thought he deserved to lift him up, and he didn’t realize he was the one ruining it.

“If it happens with everyone, maybe everyone is not the problem. Maybe you are,” I suggest in an upbeat tone, a tone that makes one think I just said something positive and encouraging, then pause and say “wait, what did she just say?” I have put the cherry on top of my sundae and am now ready to leave the ice cream shop.

As he convulses with tears, I look to Kerri. “I think we are done here?” I say shrugging and she nods. I leave while Kanye continues to cry to Kerri for another thirty minutes. About what I do not know, I went back to work and helped my other coworker Lucy sell another 2.7k bag. One I showed the client and that Lucy got the commission. “Thank you girl,” Lucy had said to me afterwards. “I love how you help, I got your back too you know,” she told me and I knew she did.

Later, with Kanye’s friends who work in the terminals sunglasses stores, they tell me how much Kanye adores me and is so sad about all this.

“Then why doesnt he just apologize? I would forgive a sincere apology, but it has to be genuine,” I say and they both deflate. They both know Kanyes ego may not allow for that, and theres not much else to be said.

To apologize is an act of strength. Relationships are messy, and we all will hurt one another, accidentally, even sometimes on purpose. But it is the apology that matters. In Japanese art there is something called Kintsugi. Instead of throwing away a broken dish, or trying to hide the damage, you use a special lacquer mixed with powdered gold and silver to glue the pieces back together. Apologies are that special lacquer in human relationships.

I wonder if part of the issue with people owning up to how they treat others is the inability to forgive themselves afterwards. It is a type of inner work that not many people want to really sit down and grapple with.

As a mother, I want Noah to know that part of being a human being is apologizing and forgiving. As a five year old he is learning to say, “Im sorry,” and then forgive himself and move on. He is learning to forgive others and move on. Grudges only weigh you down unnecessarily, the ones we hold with ourselves and with others. No one deserves to be canceled for a mistake if they own up to it, apologize and grow from it- we have to believe change in others is possible or no one ever will change. If he can learn this now, the world will open up a thousand times over to him. He will build strong, meaningful relationships. He will be of value to the world in a way a job title, a number in a bank account, or societal status could never give him.

Kanye is not bad, he just is in an arrogant mindset and did a stupid thing, and instead of fixing it, took a shovel and started to dig a hole and bury himself alive in it. Punishing himself and leaving the dish broken.

There was a time in my life where I would never want to see him buried alive and I would have offered up my forgiveness easily and possibly undeserving to the other person.

But now, if you are going to bury yourself alive with me, I will not be the hand that helps you out of your own grave.

But if you have the guts and the heart, I will always put the pieces of the dish back together with you.

“You have a big heart Jenn,” Bryant tells me as I talk to him on my drive home. He does not call me foolish for giving away a high ticket sale. Instead he says, “I am proud of you. I really am very proud of you.”

“Kanye is a little bitch though,” he adds.