To Make Whole

I love taking my child, and his good friends, out to play.

Watching those children run around, innocent and free, with those bright, radiant smiles on their faces, my heart just fills with happiness.

Later I realized it isn't only children. Whenever I see anyone with that genuine, radiant smile, I find myself growing happy along with them.

Slowly I came to understand that my happiness doesn't really come from what I myself receive. More often, it comes from seeing others happy, from seeing others do well.

Lyfairs is like this too. Every time we receive a kind word from a customer, when she says she loves it, that the piece suits her home so well, our whole team lights up with joy. That joy isn't because we've made another sale. It's because we've helped one more person find a little more delight, through something we made.

I think this is my favorite idea. To make someone, or something, whole.

To make whole is to not stand in front of you, but to stand within your life. Your home is something you created, little by little, out of your own memories and your own taste. Our pieces aren't there to steal the spotlight. They're there to blend into your space, to make it more complete, and more like you.

That customer said our piece fit her antiques just right. Hearing it, I was even happier than she was. Because in that moment, I knew what we do is right. We didn't ask her to suit us. We made her home whole.

I think if a person's happiness comes from making others whole, that is a very fortunate thing.

Because a happiness like this never runs out. In this world, there is always someone who can be made whole, always a smile that can be lit. As long as I keep doing this, I will keep being happy.

But I've also slowly come to understand that the ones I most want to make whole are the kind-hearted. The ones who are earnestly doing what's right, who are making this world a little more beautiful. To make them whole brings me a special kind of joy.

This, really, is how Lyfairs chooses what it carries. Behind every piece we choose is a kind, careful person. The artists who settle their hearts and spend so much time carving their work are, in their own way, adding a little more beauty to the world. I want to stand alongside people like this, to make them whole, and to carry the beauty they create to others who are just as kind. To let kind people meet kind people. This is what I most want to do.

Speaking of this, I think of a piece by Gordon Gu, the crystal Branch Stool. It is exactly what the word whole looks like to me.

It's made of glacier crystal, a small stool shaped like a natural branch. It's the very piece that customer bought, the one who said it fit her antiques just right.

I love it because it never steals the spotlight. It simply sits there, translucent, lovely, and yet it upstages nothing. It only blends, just right, into your space, and makes a place that was already beautiful a little more complete. It isn't the main character. It's the quiet one, the one that makes you whole.

I think I want to be a person like that too. Carrying a heart that longs to make others whole, into how I see the world, into how I build Lyfairs, into how I love the people around me.

Marie, Founder of Lyfairs