4 min read · Jan 10, 2022
After nearly two years of social distancing, last weekend, I invited my closest friends over for dinner. This was the first time since my wedding just a few months before the pandemic caused upheaval in all our lives, that my friends and I had gotten together. The first time that I hosted anyone at all since the wedding. Needless to say, I wanted the evening to be perfect. For two weeks running up to the party, I ran amok setting up our living room which hadn’t yet been put to use. I arranged the furniture, hung carefully curated frames, sprinkled fairy lights across the house. Finally, on the day of the event, I went to a flower mandi in the neighbourhood to buy some dainty bunches for final touches.
I came home with five bunches of button daisies, eucalyptus, and gypsies. I arranged the flowers in seven vases in different permutations. Each vase looked slightly different, and each of the arrangements was deliberately asymmetrical. My ‘wild’ posies.
The next day, feeling a bit sad that the party was over, I began hunting for something inspiring to read. Sometimes, life gives you things you didn’t know you needed. While looking for a motivation hack, I stumbled upon the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi.
Inspired by Buddhist philosophy, Wabi-Sabi is a meditative lens which teaches us to appreciate the beauty in imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete objects. A close relationship with nature, in its purest, most unadulterated form, is central to the Wabi-Sabi philosophy. A Wabi-Sabi lifestyle is a lifestyle of quiet, rustic simplicity, rooted in appreciating asymmetry and flaws that are found in nature. Or, in ourselves. Or, in others.
After a very long time, I came across a philosophy that just… clicked. It made me stop in my tracks and take a second look at the way I live my life, and the way I hope to evolve. After a long time, I was reassured that I’m doing something right.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that Wabi-Sabi is, indeed, a liberating approach to life. Most of our frustration comes from an expectation for things to be just-so. To be ‘perfect’, whatever that may mean for us. We feel sad when something runs its course — like I did the morning after my long due reunion with my friends. And finally, we are so eager to reach the finish line that we often forget that all of us are works in progress.
When you train yourself to accept these three realities of life, as Wabi-Sabi teaches you to, you begin to see the beauty in it. And that, in turn, makes you feel lighter and happier.
Wabi-Sabi is an antithesis to the Western ideals of perfection — perfect grades, perfect home, perfect job, perfect partner, perfect you. Just the thought of it is so stressful! Imagine having to life like that! This Japanese way of being reminds you that perfection is not only stressful, but also, unnatural.
So, how does one get there?
How does one let go of the expectation to be flawless, and embrace flawed being? The method is imbibed in the philosophy itself. Wabi-Sabi begins with learning to appreciate the ‘brokenness’ we see in nature. This is both the philosophy, and the method.
Spending time in nature teaches you many valuable lessons. Here, I show you how it teaches us the three tenets of Wabi-Sabi:
Appreciating impermanence
If you nurse a plant for a whole year, you will bear witness to how it changes as it cycles from spring to summer to fall to winter, and finally, back to summer. Some seasonal plants die in a short while, reminding us to make the best of their beauty while they are there.
Embracing imperfections and asymmetry
If you look closely at a plant — any plant — you’ll find that it’s not symmetrical. One leaf may be slightly bigger than the other. One shoot might grow in one direction, while the other takes over the opposite. Some of the most beautiful flowering plants have thorns that can cause much damage. Plants are also simultaneously beautified and marred when they begins to wither. We seldom feel the urge to remove these ‘flaws’ from plants. So, why do we feel the need to make ourselves flawless?
Learning to be patient with incompleteness
Have you ever raised a plant? If you haven’t, I suggest you do so. To watch a seed germinate, blossom and grow inch by inch is a fascinating experience. But more importantly, it teaches you to be patient and trusting of the process. We’re all at different stages of life, but on the same journey that a seed takes from the time it is put in soil to the time it finally lives its course and withers away.
