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The Wabi-Sabi Self
A Japanese aesthetic philosophy provides a fresh perspective on our so-called physical flaws.
https://experiencelife.com/
JESSIE SHOLL · JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2014


About five years ago, I stopped getting carded at bars and began hearing “ma’am” more often than “miss.” Though I was in my late 30s, these encounters stung at first. I consoled myself with the fact that I really was too old to be mistaken for an 18-year-old, and “ma’am” is at least a gesture of respect. I knew lamenting lost youth was, at best, an exercise in futility. I’d watched friends agonize about aging, and I’d never seen the point. But it was still hard to look in the mirror and see the lines underneath my eyes and the pouchiness under my chin without feeling disappointed.

Then I learned about the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, or “imperfect beauty.” The concept has its roots in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and is sometimes explained by using the example of a well-loved teacup, made by an artist’s hands, cracked or chipped by use. Such traces remind the observer that nothing is permanent — even fixed objects are subject to change.

The classical Greek ideal of beauty, which underpins much of the Western physical aesthetic, celebrates smooth, symmetrical perfection. Wabi sabi prizes authenticity. The cracks in the old teacup are seen as assets rather than flaws. “Wabi sabi is a different kind of looking, a different kind of mindset,” explains Robyn Griggs Lawrence, author of Simply Imperfect: Revisiting the Wabi-Sabi House (New Society Publishers, 2011). “It’s the true acceptance of finding beauty in things as they are.”

Yet wabi sabi is more than a way of looking at things. It is “a way of life that appreciates and accepts complexity while at the same time values simplicity,” writes Richard Powell in Wabi Sabi Simple (Adams Media, 2004). He says it acknowledges three simple realities: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

In the United States, most of us grew up with a worldview that is decidedly more influenced by classical Greece. Unless our bodies fit a certain ideal, we resent them. This is where adopting a wabi-sabi outlook can be eye opening — and mind opening. By perceiving ourselves through this generous lens, we can stop endlessly striving for the ideal body and focus instead on real physical health. All it takes is a shift in perception.

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ENJOYING THE PROCESS

“In nature, everything is in a state of process and then eventually a state of decay or death,” says Tony Burris, an acupuncturist in Boise, Idaho, who incorporates wabi-sabi concepts into his practice. “And we’re not excluded from that process. The process is the actual ‘there.’”

For me, respecting the process has meant accepting my relationship to the headstand pose during yoga class. I’ve been practicing for years, but because of an old neck injury that created nerve pain in my arms and hands, I don’t attempt headstand. It feels too risky. Still, even though I have valid reasons for avoiding it, I used to dread the headstand portion of classes and would find ways to fake my way through it. I’d either assume child’s pose or pretend I was trying to jump up, because I was simply unwilling to accept what my body was telling me.

Looking at my yoga through the wabi-sabi lens, and specifically its tenet that everything is unfinished and in process, I have stopped berating myself for not mastering this tricky pose. Now I can relax and enjoy a class. “When you can accept things as they are,” Lawrence says, “there is no judgment. You’re not saying I should weigh less, weigh more, not have these wrinkles, but instead this is what’s happening. The suffering comes when there’s a craving for it to be different.”

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