Living the wabi sabi life
The Japanese have a knack for bringing ancient wisdom to the modern world, from wise proverbs to life-enhancing philosophies.
There is ikigai, the method of finding your life purpose or reason for being, and shankankan, a philosophy which teaches the virtue of patience. The Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with liquid gold is called kintsugi, teaching you to embrace your own flaws and imperfections. If you could absorb all these traditional zen ideas into one philosophy, it might just be wabi sabi.
Pronounced “wah-bi sah-bi”, wabi sabi is a concept from Japanese aesthetics that encourages us to see beauty in the “perfectly imperfect” and to accept the transient nature of life (of which the fleeting cherry blossom season is an apt analogy, the delicate flowers inevitably falling within weeks of blooming). Much like a sudden sense of nostalgia or an overwhelming emotion that you can’t quite explain, the concept is a heart-centred experience and its meaning differs for everyone. As such, there is no universal definition for wabi sabi in the Japanese language, making it impossible to translate.
