Wabi-Sabi

The subject of accepting one’s age recently came up on my Twitter feed so I thought I’d share my thoughts on Wabi-Sabi.

Do you know about Wabi-Sabi?

It’s the Japanese tradition of revering authenticity, finding the beauty in imperfection, celebrating transience.

What could be more perfect for aging baby-boomers than a mindset celebrating the loveliness of life on the far side of ripe? Wabi-Sabi finds the beauty in impermanence, imperfection, and incompletion.

When I first read about Wabi-Sabi in “Your Beautiful Imperfect Life” way back in the October 200I issue of Utne Reader, I recognized instantly this was an attitude I wanted to adopt and cultivate. It’s a philosophy I try (often struggle) to put to use each morning as I look in the mirror and seek to find the elegance in entropy.

Wabi-Sabi came about in Japan after a time of refined hedonism. (Sound familiar?) Utne contributing editor Jon Spayde described Sabi as a mood “of attentive melancholy” and Wabi as “a cozier, more object-centered aesthetic of less as more.” Fused together, Wabi-Sabi is “awareness of the transience of earthly things and a resigned pleasure in simple things that bear the marks of that transience.”

With Wabi-Sabi, I am on the lookout for new role models, no more glorifying youth for youth’s sake, and no more emphasis on the superficial. I want to admire the charm and aesthetic of age, appreciate the world as it is, and find beauty in the flaws and imperfections that mark a life.

It is not the sleek, the store-bought, or the status symbol that merits my new appreciation. Instead I want to consider the dignity of the well-used thing, its sweetness in having served. I want to revere the cycle of dust to dust, each atom of us more intricate than a snowflake and just as fleeting.

One thing that makes Wabi-Sabi great and pure is that it doesn’t cost a thing. All that’s required is for you simply to accept the natural beauty of the natural progression. But that doesn’t mean Wabi-Sabi is easy.

It’s one thing to say you’ll try to appreciate the wistful beauty of a wrinkle. It is another thing to do so.

We’re all ascending in the years and every time we look in the mirror, we confront our own mortality. You may not see it as a pretty picture. My initial reaction to dewlaps was not applause. Time and again, I have had to remind myself that when you cannot change a situation, change yourself. I try. Miserably sometimes.

For me, Wabi-Sabi has had to be consciously developed and it’s been a gradual (sometimes imperceptible) integration into my attitude. I continue to have the kneejerk reaction to getting older, which is dread or anxiety, so I must always remind myself of the good that comes with maturity. Age is not better than youth but aging is good. You can’t deny that. If you’re not aging, you’re dead, whatever your philosophy.

Wabi-Sabi is not my first impulse when the world informs me that even if I do not feel older in spirit, I look older, so I must try to recognize the gifts that age is giving me. Wabi-Sabi helps. Perhaps with practice I will learn how to honor that which has withstood time, which serves, which endures (until it doesn’t).

Maybe I can learn how to love the tired and broken, how to embrace the almosts and the has-beens. And, if I do not always do better, if I falter, sigh, there’s a certain beauty in that too.

Wabi-Sabi, I acknowledge to myself most mornings. Some days I need to say it aloud. “Wabi-Sabi.”

Other days I still want to think of myself as a badass, as someone to be reckoned with, as someone who knows what it is to be fierce, and then I put on my best Samuel L. Jackson voice, and say it again, “Wabi-Sabi, mother fucker, Wabi-Sabi.”

I can take getting older and I can love it too.

Want to learn more about Wabi-Sabi? Here are the individual links:

“Wabi-Sabi the Art of Imperfection” by Robyn Griggs Lawrence
“A Brief History of Wabi-Sabi”” by Jon Spayde
“LivingWabi-Sabi” by Marcia Tyson Kolb

 

Peace, love, and solace