There was a potter—an amazing potter, the best that anyone had ever seen. He made perfect vases and basins, things used by kings across the land. Some claimed his pots and figurines were alive, that they had a soul in them—and in some ways they did.
A servant came to him: Sir, we require the best figurines for the king. We will pay the highest price. Double it, actually. But this time the potter declined. His very best pieces he kept in the back, away from the people—because to give a beautiful thing away, even to a king who loves it, is to risk that its true beauty goes unseen, and that one day someone trips on it and it shatters, and they have not the tools to mend it.
Now the potter took in a child, for one day he too would die. He taught the child to work as he did. The child was clumsy at first—the hands awkward on the clay, the wheel spinning too fast, clay everywhere. But each time, the master picked the child back up, dusted him off, and said, let's try again. And when the child broke the master's beautiful pieces, the two of them sat together and mended them, weaving gold into the cracks—the imperfection becoming the beauty.
One day, when the child was nearly grown, the master entered the back room and marveled: the child had made a piece indistinguishable from his own. And the master wept with joy.
The child asked, Master, are you not afraid? I have made a thing as beautiful as yours. I could contend with you.
The master smiled. Making the perfect pot was never the best thing I could make. Making a maker is the best thing I could make.
Now the child was grown, and opened his own shop, and people came in droves. And the same servant of the king came, saying, Sir, we require the best figurines for the king. We will pay the highest price. Double it, actually.
The child had an impossible choice, and he agonized: Master, why have you cursed me to make beautiful things and hide them from the world? But the answer came in the quiet between the noise. His most precious creations were not hidden out of loss—they were his to behold, his to love in the space between the loud parts of the shop.
So, just like his master, he built a hidden back room and set his finest pieces there. And from time to time he went back and looked at the beautiful things his hands had made—the perfectly imperfect beauty of them.