wabi-sabi

in my color class on wednesday, my instructor, lamar, mentioned something called wabi-sabi. he defined it as "perfection through imperfection." i found this idea intruiging. so after a little research (ok, really i just wiki-ed it), i found it to be even more beautiful than how he had described it.

a few interesting wiki tidbits:

1- wabi-sabi focuses on 3 things that are descriptive of all life: imperfection, impermanance, and incompletion.

2- wabi connotes simplicity, freshness, or quietness, and understated elegance. it also refers to quirks and anomalies arising from the construction process.

3- sabi is the beauty that comes with age, when the life of the object and its impermanance are evidenced in its patina, or in any visible repairs.

wabi sabi exemplified in a teahouse

the reason this concept was so intruiging to me is that i feel like everything and everyone has a bit of wabi-sabi in them. and to me that's the beauty of our creation. everything in nature is imperfect (pieces of us are constantly living and dying, regrowing and replacing). everything is incomplete (when does a tree ever stop growing?). and everything is impermanant, too.

and it's just a mindset that can look at these qualities and see them as beautiful, instead of a negative aspect. i think looking at things and people from this vantage point could make anyone happier. instead of seeing flaws, we can see quirks that make a beautiful whole.

we can be sad that roses have thorns or amazed that thorn bushes have roses, right? i'm going to choose to see the wabi-sabi.