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I want to share something with you that I’m hoping will inspire you as much as it has inspired me. It alone has had an enormous impact on helping me to be more relaxed about my house—and about myself.
After all these years simplifying my life, you’d think I would have heard about every concept there is related to simplicity—but here’s something I just learned about: Wabi-sabi. It’s a Japanese concept that celebrates imperfection. Let me repeat that:
It’s not just about accepting imperfection—it’s about celebrating it. I’ll tell you how it impacted me in a moment. But first, here is the traditional Zen story that has been handed around about wabi-sabi. It’s called “Sen no Rikyu is permitted to learn The Way of Tea.”
Sen no Rikyu desired to learn The Way of Tea. He visited the Tea Master, Takeno Joo. Joo ordered Rikyu to tend the garden. Eagerly Rikyu set to work. He raked the garden until the ground was in perfect order. When he had finished he surveyed his work. He then shook the cherry tree, causing a few flowers to fall at random onto the ground. The Tea Master Joo admitted Rikyu to his school. Rikyu in due course became a great Tea Master. It was he who introduced the concept of wabi-sabi, or elegant simplicity.
I learned about wabi-sabi from Abby Seixas, author of Finding the Deep River Within. She told me, “Wabi-sabi is a different way of seeing. It’s seeing beauty in the way dead leaves lay on the ground, or in a bowl with a crack in it. It says that something that’s perfect is not as beautiful as this beautiful imperfection because life is impermanent and life is always changing.
“It’s not something you need to do. It’s more a way of seeing. If you have a perfectionist streak, try a little wabi-sabi. For instance, can you see the beauty of a few dirty dishes left in the sink, or in your child’s unbrushed hair?
“Next time you want to jump up and comb that hair or wash those dishes, pause for a moment and see if you can appreciate whatever it is—just as it is. Just for a moment.”
What I love most about this concept is that wabi-sabi says that something that is perfect is not as beautiful as beautiful imperfection.
This is a very hard concept for us to grasp in our perfection-minded U.S. culture. In the U.S., everything has to be perfect in order to be OK. Our homes have to be perfect, and our lives and our children’s lives have to be perfect. If that weren’t the case, then we wouldn’t have our children enrolled in every confounded activity under the sun. No wonder kids are stressed. No wonder adults are stressed. We feel we have to be everything to everybody at all times.
Considering this, I was intrigued by wabi-sabi. I loved that it wasn’t yet one more thing to do—it was simply a new way of seeing.
A few days after first hearing about wabi-sabi, I had a houseguest coming. I cleaned and made sure the bathroom and kitchen were decent, but then I took a breath and stopped. I thought about wabi-sabi and told myself, “Enough perfection, already. Enough.”
My houseguest wasn’t perfect, simply because no one is, so why did I need to act like I was, or that my life was? I don’t live in a model house. I’m a normal human being. I’m deep in the middle of real life, every waking moment of every waking day. There is virtually nothing perfect about me, my house, or my life. So why am I pretending?
Pretty soon it really sank in. There is real beauty in my own imperfection. There is real beauty in a few papers left strewn around. There is real beauty in a few dishes in the sink. It shows that life—real life—goes on in this house. With real life comes love, people, humanness, mess, and big-time imperfection.
So I let go of needing to do any more with my house. I wanted it to be clean enough that it showed respect for my guest, but I didn’t need to make it perfect. I didn’t need to be perfect, either, in order for my houseguest to like me. In fact, like everyone else, I’m a lot more endearing when I’m not perfect—my imperfections make me who I am today.
If you’re as intrigued by wabi-sabi as I am, here are a few ideas on how to incorporate it into your life:
There is beauty in imperfection, but not in clutter. It’s lovely to appreciate a few cherry blossoms scattered over the ground or a few dishes left in the sink. But there’s nothing beautiful about too much stuff, whether it’s too much furniture, too many clothes spilling out of a closet, too much stuff on the walls, or too many piles of paper clutter.
Wabi-sabi is multi-dimensional. One of its elements is about finding as much pleasure in things as in finding pleasure without things. Someone with a house crammed with clutter has been spending too much of his or her good energy on finding pleasure in things, to the point where s/he is now strangled by the things. See what happens? Wabi-sabi is about appreciating balance, because when you don’t, you get strangled by the very things you thought would give you pleasure. Too much of anything is a bad thing.
If this sounds like you, take a minute to notice how the stuff you have been chasing after is now strangling you. Too many commitments and projects on your plate have caused paper clutter, and they have caused you to feel stressed for time. Too big a fascination with clothes has caused your closet to be unmanageable. Too much focus on accumulating anything and everything has quite literally caused you to feel strangled in your own house—the place that is supposed to be your refuge.
If you want a “wabi-sabi” home, then start today by getting rid of everything that isn’t beautiful or useful to you. Don’t think about it. Get rid of it. Open up some space in your house so you can breathe, and so you can appreciate what you do have. Otherwise, the beautiful stuff gets literally buried by everything else, and you can’t appreciate anything.
Wabi-sabi your wardrobe. Men, by nature, tend toward wabi-sabi, or simplicity in dressing, which makes life a lot easier for them. But women are bombarded by every kind of crazy, trendy, cluttered dressing option imaginable, making their lives extremely complicated, as they must constantly navigate a huge array of choices. Enough of trends!
Probably the two best examples of wabi-sabi dressing (for women) are Jackie Kennedy-Onassis and Audrey Hepburn. They wore very simple, well-made, clean-lined, classic clothes. You can make your life so much easier by following their example and dressing simply and elegantly. Elegance, by its very nature, is simple, clean, and timeless. Fads are just the opposite—cluttered, crazy, “notice-me” kinds of styles. Fads are complicated because you have to stay up on the trends in order to look good, and you always have to get rid of clothes that are out of style.
For inspiration, find books with pictures of Jackie-O and Audrey. Notice the details, the shapes, the solid colors, and the clean designs of the clothes they wore. Simply beautiful.
Wabi-sabi your mind. I’ll admit that this is the hardest application, but you can at least get it into your awareness. What if you started looking at your imperfections as beautiful, rather than more evidence that you need fixing? I don’t mean letting yourself go or stopping your personal and spiritual growth. I just mean letting go of perfection because you will never, ever get there, and neither will anyone else.
I’ll tell you something else. I went to a workshop recently where there were about 120 people in attendance. When I first walked in, I looked around the room and immediately started judging everybody. We all do it, so I’m hardly unique. Based on what I saw, I decided whether or not I was going to like this person or that person.
But as the workshop progressed, and most everyone let loose their insecurities, I began to fall in love with the people who were the most real, the most vulnerable, and the most imperfect. We bonded with each other over our imperfections and our humanity. What a beautiful thing.
So why do we always think we need to come across to other people as if we have it all together? We think they’ll like us better that way, but, in reality, we bond by letting go of the pretenses.
Think about that. Take a risk and let go. Be real. Just see what happens. See how much less stressful it is to just be who you are, rather than trying to pretend to be something you’re not.
Let go. Another way to look at wabi-sabi is described by Richard R. Powell, author of Wabi Sabi for Writers: Find Inspiration. Respect Imperfection. Create Peerless Beauty. He says, “It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”
What does this mean for you? If you really understand and accept that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect, then you can let go of both material and emotional baggage. One reason people have so much clutter is because they feel they have to hang on tightly to their stuff for various reasons. Or they hang on tightly to their political or other viewpoints, thinking they are right and everyone else is wrong. Hanging on tightly to anything causes stress.
What if, instead, you looked at life like a river—always flowing. Water leaves, and more water comes in. The stuff in your life leaves, and more comes in. The same idea applies to your opinions and beliefs—if you open up and stop hanging on so tightly to your viewpoints, new ideas and viewpoints will come in. Always and forever life flows, so you’ll get rid of huge amounts of stress by not hanging on so tightly.
Best of luck to you as you wabi-sabi your life. Give it a try—I know it will be a breath of fresh air for you, just as it was for me.
Yours in simplicity,
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