Wabi-sabi: The Beauty Of Imperfection

 Wabi-sabi: The Beauty Of Imperfection

When I was younger, I was very focused on achieving something that wasn’t real. If I couldn’t achieve perfection, then what was the point? It became a saddening process of endless revisions; this pressure to be the best, the smartest person possible.

Wabi-sabi is an approach to life and design that embraces imperfection while believing in finding beauty in unique materials and certain anomalies. Most notably realized through Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is often illustrated as a natural world where things are not as they appear at first glance. Not perfection. Not conventional. And not necessarily complete.

The idea of wabi-sabi is one that is hard to grasp, not because it lacks in pragmatics or complexities, but rather because of its simplicity. But this simplicity is just another way to understand what the concept is about and how it can be applied in real life in some meaningful ways..

Two Pillars Of Wabi-Sabi: Acceptance And Purity

It’s hard to fully know the wabi-sabi aesthetic unless we strive for true acceptance of imperfection and imperfection alone. Accepting imperfection means we acknowledge how things are and how they should be. It means that we appreciate the context, the environment, and humans involved in it.

Purity refers to the absence of imperfection, being flawlessly perfect. Purity is a shared ideal of beauty; where perfection is an absence, wabi-sabi is a form of simplicity with real flaws. Wabi-sabi embraces what is already there; this much is certain.

Wabi Seeks To Make The Beauty Of Nature Visible

The wabi-sabi aesthetic seeks to make this beauty visible; ways in which it can be seen and felt through use of materials, shapes, textures and so on. The beauty of nature needs to be highlighted by seemingly mundane things, like old toys and cracked teacups.

The beauty of nature is hidden within us, but it’s also around us. It’s in the imperfections of how we age, grow and burn away at our core; the way we are always transforming through life without fail.

Wabi-Sabi Aesthetics Encourages Beauty Through Use: Things Are Not What You See

Wabi-sabi encourages a lifestyle based on respect for use -the idea that things are not what you see. Tools are not simply tools; an object is not simply an object. Objects are imbued with the spirit of its user and held with respect.

This is the idea that things are more than what meets the eye. This is about recognizing the reality of a tool; examining it for its history, circumstances and environment in which it was used.

We hate old clocks because we see them without context; it seems perverse to us to have such a beautiful object reduced to a collection of parts. Or when items cannot be repaired because they’re beyond repair. We hate seeing our possessions used in ways we aren’t comfortable with, so we try to hide them away as décor or museum artifacts rather than showing them off with pride as beautiful heirlooms and family heirlooms.

Often our sensitivity to objects is used as a measure of our own self worth. The pride we have for things that have been loved, cherished and used over years we often wish could be erased from existence through newness. We can’t stand having too many things or that there isn’t enough of something because we don’t want to see it used and discarded.

Wabi-Sabi Understands That An Object Should Not Be Taken At Face Value

The beauty in wabi-sabi aesthetics lies in the imperfection of how things are typically viewed; the realization that they are not what is being focused on. The objects we look at are themselves not what is important. Our focus should be on our own experience, the context and environment around a thing, the person that made it, and how they treated it across the years.

Our sensitivity to objects is a sign of humanity; it’s our self awareness in which we realize that things don’t just come with beauty and meaning when we simply buy them and put them in storage. This complexity of our values, preferences and opinions are what make us human. We want things to last long for many reasons. We want them to serve us well and we want them to last a long time so as to keep their value intact over time.

In our haste to get things, buy things and make things, we often forget that it was the materials and processes used to produce these objects that made them so unique and special in the first place. This is why wabi-sabi aesthetics embraces imperfection. It’s not about making things perfect; it’s about confronting what is there without bias or indifference. It’s about seeing the beauty in this reality and appreciating nature at its most basic level: being a thing itself rather than a collection of parts.

Wabi-Sabi Is About Embracing The Beauty Of Life’s Imperfections

It’s about accepting the realities of life and embracing them in a way that creates beauty. It’s about not being concerned with what could be or should be but accepting what is. It’s about looking for ways to make this beauty tangible through use and by sharing it with other people in an authentic and purposeful way, rather than hiding it away as an object.

There is much to learn through wabi-sabi aesthetics, the idea of acceptance leading to true beauty. It’s about appreciating the natural imperfection of things to show the beauty in their form, processes and contexts. To understand that a thing is much more than how it appears at first glance, and to not be concerned with what could be or should be but what is.

Wabi-Sabi Is About Being Present And Experiencing The Beauty Of Life

To experience the beauty of life we must embrace imperfection. This means to understand that life is full of flaws and that these flaws are often overlooked because they are not often seen as desirable. It means we should not seek to make something perfect, but rather to have it be what it is so that its imperfection can become our acceptance of something beyond the attachment we have to making things perfect.

There are many reasons why we seek perfection, whether out of fear or insecurity or regressive fears of loss. We are afraid that if things are not perfect then our point of view is incorrect. This is why wabi-sabi holds great value -the idea that a thing is more than just how it appears at first glance. We must see its authenticity and see the context in which it exists.

Conclusion

Wabi-sabi aesthetics is an overall way of looking at reality, a way we must learn to accept and see the beauty in imperfections. It’s a way of life that relates to everything and everyone we interact with, being neither understated nor overstated. It’s a way of appreciating what is most beautiful about life, our experiences and everything around us -in whatever form that may take.

To learn more about wabi-sabi aesthetics check out the links below:

About the author: I am an author, speaker, coach and consultant who helps people become more enthusiastic about what they do and how they live. My book, The Passion Plan is available for purchase on Amazon.