Befriending Wabi-Sabi
What's this thing called wabi-sabi and why should it be a friend? It is a Japanese concept that rang true with me when I learned about it several years ago. I'm sure I am not the only person who struggles with achieving perfection. Quite frankly I am very imprecise and envy those who can draw precisely, pass tests with high scores, or learn multiple languages and instruments to name a few. Even when I tried hard to achieve these things, my brain did not seem to deliver. I carried this imperfection like a flaw throughout my youth.
To give myself a break, I finally decided to try something radical - to wear my imperfection like a comfy coat. Meet it where it is to inform my life, not detract from it. To honor a natural, rustic, unpretentious style and approach to the choices I made. In other words - to not try so hard and let me be me without the constant comparisons. And if you didn't already know, those "perfect," talented people I may have envied were likely in a self-defeating process of comparing themselves to higher standards as well. We all compare to some extent.
Then I heard about wabi-sabi. Each word has a meaning that together creates another meaning. Wabi conveys the beauty found in imperfection, simplicity, flaws. Sabi is finding beauty from aging and celebrating impermanence. Together they invite one to embrace impermanence, brokenness, and aging. To be more in tune with nature and find inspiration and beauty in the ordinary. Exactly the opposite of our Western-minded esthetics of seeking perfection and fighting the aging process!
I had been hijacked for too long! As a creative person who is highly imprecise, I would often become very dissatisfied with something that I was making which produced heavy judgment, disappointment, and throwing the "mistake" away. However, with a wabi-sabi mindset, I disengaged from those defeatist thoughts and learned to transform the piece by reconfiguring it or reworking it into another project. I no longer focused on mistakes being an end. I focused on letting the imperfection inform my next choice. How freeing that has been!
Perhaps it is time to reevaluate the messages we pay attention to. To loosen the grip of a society that dictates perfect esthetics and drives us to self-judgment and detrimental comparisons. Dare to embrace imperfection while always doing our best. There is a practice in wabi-sabi. When an object breaks, gold lacquer is used to repair the pieces. The breaks are seen and enhanced by the beauty of the gold. We all have endured a lifetime of experiences that have broken us in unique ways. That is the beauty of our individuality. As David Whyte says:
"Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul's individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else's."