How to Embrace Your Imperfections Using Wabi-Sabi

My Grandmother's Paring Knife

A tiny waist.

Perfect breasts. Perfectly round, red tomatoes. Identical ears of corn. Pristine china with matching cups. These are what humans strive for every day. Perfection. We are taught from a young age to accept nothing less. To get straight A’s in school, to have the perfect marriage, the perfect job, the perfect life.

Americans represent only 5% of the world’s population, but we generate 30% of the world’s garbage. Since when did we become the garbage country? When did the push for perfection destroy our sensibilities and overflow our landfills?

I gave up perfection for one simple reason. The expense. It became too costly to have perfect nails every week, the perfect place setting on the table, the perfect man. I gave up perfection and started practicing Wabi-sabi.

What IS Wabi-sabi anyway?

Derived from Buddhist teachings, particularly the tea ceremony, it’s a comprehensive worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It’s sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”

Most Japanese people will tell you that Wabi-sabi is difficult to put into words but Leonard Koren, author of “Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers,” came up with this description. “Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental.”

Wabi-sabi isn’t something you can buy at the store or package up at home by collecting a few articles from several rooms. Wabi-sabi is a mindset that shows there is a beauty to be found in all things. From a cracked china cup to a draft of a letter written to a loved one. You can see it when you look at old, decaying buildings; time and age have not been kind to them, but the stories they tell with their cracked and peeling paint could fill volumes. You just need to listen.

Wabi-sabi is not a shopping mall; it’s a thrift store. You won’t find perfection in fine lines, perfect bodies and matched sets. Celebrate and cherish your favorite chipped cereal bowl you’ve had since you were a child. Smile and know those crows-feet around your eyes are from laughing so much and living your life.

What is my Wabi-sabi? It’s the paring knife that my grandmother used for years. Even after the blade broke off, it was her go-to for cutting, peeling and chopping vegetables. It’s the old Marx toy tank my Dad played with as a child. There wasn’t a lot of money to be had during the recession, and the tank was one of his prized possessions. It was well-loved and well-played with, and it’s still a treasure to me, despite it’s chipped paint, dents and missing driver. It’s a stone I found when I was young, rubbed smooth by little hands. It’s worth nothing but precious memories.

Find perfection in the imperfections. Start looking for your Wabi-sabi.