Wabi-sabi

You won’t find it in glass and steel skyskrapers or in the flawless faces of supermodels.  It is beauty that is in the every day, the simplicity of daily living.  It is in the asymetrical shape of the bread dough you just formed and in the crack in your favourite teacup.  I am referring to Wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism that appreciates the beauty of age, cracks, and imperfections.  Instead of seeking perfection, and instead of resigning to the idea that the teacup is beautiful in spite of its crack, Wabi-sabi asserts that the flaws are the beauty.

Sometimes I feel like I am not supposed to own anything perfect.  After years of owning an outdated cell phone, I owned a new IPhone for less than 24 hours before I dropped it on our concrete driveway and cracked the screen. I imagine you too have Wabi-sabi in many parts of your life.  The heat mark on your dining room table and the scratch in your wood floor has a story, and maybe has beauty.  Look around with fresh eyes, a new perspective.  You might be surprised at what you find.

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s where the light gets in”

Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

Wishing you beauty in imperfection,

hk

p.s.  For more on this idea, check out Leonard Koren’s book: "Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers," He defines Wabi-sabi as “the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental."