Wabi-Sabi: A Comforting Philosophy for 2020 and Beyond.
How the 16th century Japanese design aesthetic can help us find the hidden beauty in this painfully imperfect year and guide us into 2021.
A Philosophy for the Homebound of 2020
Travel provides an unparelled opportunity to connect with others; to learn about cultures, philosophies and ways of living; and in turn, to learn about ourselves. As a result of the pandemic, travel has been something that I (like so many others) have put on hold to help stop the spread of Covid-19. While this unexpected grounding has been personally heartbreaking, I have found other ways to expand my horizons.
I am travelling again, but now through my bookshelves.
I confess, I have a lot of books. Books are the one thing in which I indulge to absolute excess. When I travel, I leave home with one small back pack containing only the essentials and return with new luggage filled to the brim with books.
Living alone through this awful year, stuck inside under strict public health measures, I have found an escape through my book collection. I have been able to see the world — or an admittedly inadquate facsmile of the world— from the confines of my little home.
Throughout my ‘travels’ of 2020, I have consistently returned to one little publication: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren.
Please remember that I am a traveller here and I cannot profess any expertise on the subject of wabi-sabi. I am a stranger in this country and I will do my best to communicate what I have learned and how it has helped me grow. As in all travels, I go forward into a place that is not my own with humility and curiosity to guide me.
What is Wabi-Sabi?
Wabi-sabi is a term many consider untranslatable and undefinable. Its essence is difficult to reduce to words alone, even in Japanese.
As a design aesthetic, wabi-sabi finds expression in a wide range of mediums from tea ceremony, architecture, ceramics, garden design, to flower arranging. Wabi-sabi pieces of art are characteristically rustic, uneven, awkward, and made of natural materials. Considered by some to be ugly at first glance, upon further reflection wabi-sabi objects display their history of use and misuse as a sign of their intrinsic beauty.
While wabi-sabi is often used to describe art and architecture, the characteristics and spirit of wabi-sabi transcend artistic practices and provide guiding principles for living as well. As I struggled to navigate 2020, I found comfort in these principles as I made my way through this difficult, awkward and imperfect year.
Beauty in the Bittersweet
“Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness.” – Leonard Koren
The notion that something ugly and imperfect can also be beautiful is counterintuitive in our modern world. In wabi-sabi this notion may be expressed in the rough and stained weather-worn surface of a well-used object, or a crack that shows an object has not had an easy life. Despite these imperfections, wabi-sabi calls on us to see that these objects are still useful and beautiful.
That beauty can exist in something that has been battered by the elements feels contradictory, but so are so many things in 2020. For instance, the notion that doing nothing (ie. collectively staying home) is actually doing a lot for the fight against the virus is a counterintuitive reality that many of us struggle with every day. We want to do more. We want to join choirs that sing outside hospitals or nursing homes. We want to hold book drives and prayer groups. We want to bang pots and pans at seven o’clock and hold parades for neighourhood kids.
But unless those outtings are actually assisting front line workers or those in need, they would much rather we stay home because many of these activities are increasing unnecessary contacts with others and helping the virus spread. We don’t have to try to make this beautiful with extra efforts that may put others at risk. There is already beauty in this ugliness.
Counterintuitively, our very inaction is a tremendous collective action. Just as there is beauty that can be coaxed out of ugliness, there is action that lies in inaction. Its bittersweet to know you are keeping others safe by staying out of the fray and it is hard to feel disconnected and without purpose, but by doing so, we are helping more than we can ever know.
Smaller and Quieter
“Things wabi-sabi are usually small and compact, quiet and inward oriented.” – Leonard Koren
For many, 2020 has meant turning inward into the quiet private realm of the home. For those who are not on the frontlines, things have slowed significantly and we are living smaller lives which are, at times, infuriatingly simple. Many feel trapped.
Wabi-sabi spaces are like this, but in a way that accepts a calm, modest, and humble scale of living. Wabi-sabi spaces are designed to embrace simplicity and to warmly envelop the occupant.
“Simplicity is at the core of wabi-sabi” — Leonard Koren
Finding the wabi-sabi of our own homes in today’s modern world may at first feel like a lowering of our expectations; simply making do. But, as I have passed these months alone in my 110 year old home, I am appreciating more than ever the space around me. While I am finding new cracks and problems that need attention, I am also slowing down to notice the beauty in the old hardwood floors, misshapen and with gaps between boards that fill with crumbs (…and yes, I’ve had a lot of time to notice the crumbs). I notice the grain on the deep oak door frames and the bannister with the wear of hands that have repeatedly found the same worn spot for balance for over a century. I am seeing the beauty in the stories these details and imperfections tell.
“Wabi-sabi is about the minor and hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral: things so subtle and evanescent they are invisible to vulgar eyes.” — Leonard Koren
Now as I spend every day at home alone with a dog and a cat, I am finding myself more and more thankful for the womb-like safety this space has provided me. I think of this home’s prior occupants as they waited and worried over the century, through the Spanish Flu and the World Wars. They were filled with fears just like I am and this space gave them comfort.
In early March I resented this space. Now I see my home as my companion through a terrifying time; a simple, humble vessel in which I can safely live out a these months in anticipation of the end of the pandemic. When I see this structure in this way, I see its beauty and utility in all this ugliness, and I feel that I am no longer trapped.
Imperfect and Impermanent
“Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” – Leonard Koren
A year ago, as we looked forward to the year 2020, we selfishly felt it owed us so much more than we’ve since been given. Cancelled plans, cancelled weddings, lost time in classrooms, too many video-conference calls and too few long embraces. This year has been so incredibly imperfect, but these moments are impermanent, and God-willing, more moments will follow.
Just like an imperfect wabi-sabi ceramic vessel, there has been beauty in the imperfect year that has passed. Living every day in our smaller spheres, we have an opportunity to notice the once inconspicuous and once hidden beauty of our homes, and our neighbourhoods. We have taken up new hobbies and we have baked a lot of bread. We have explored outdoor spaces and walked our neighbourhoods with fresh eyes. We have learned to appreciate the details.
On a community level, in this imperfect year we’ve seen community members come together to protect the vulnerable by staying home, social distancing and wearing masks, we’ve seen millions demand racial equality and justice, we’ve seen the sheer beauty of science in the development of the Covid-19 vaccines and we have seen a global outpouring of love and support for front-line workers.
But as the months pass, I (like many others) feel like I have missed so much and that so much is missing. In these moments of disappointment, I remind myself that this is not forever. This year is imperfect, but it is also impermanent. Just like any other year, we will never get it back again. It is up to us to make of it what we can.
Respect for the Natural World
“Wabi-sabi means treading lightly on the planet and knowing how to appreciate whatever is encountered, no matter how trifling, whenever it is encountered.” – Leonard Koren
We are fragile and the forces of nature are unrelenting. 2020 has made this abundantly clear. With the destruction of ecosystems, viruses like Covid-19 have more opportunities to jump from animals to humans. The wabi-sabi ideals of respecting nature and treading lightly on the planet reflect a profoundly different world view than the ways we have been living in the first decades of the 21st century.
Wabi-sabi tells us that we must adapt to the unrelenting forces of nature. We are not impervious to sun, wind, rain, heat and other forces of the natural world. Just as natural wear is celebrated on the rusted and stained wabi-sabi objects, we too must find beauty in how we are shaped by our natural world and respect its power over us. When the pandemic is over, we cannot go back to the way things were. We cannot continue to treat the natural world as a commodity to exploit.
An Almost Unbearable Nothingness
“Wabi-sabi images force us to contemplate our own mortality, and they evoke an existential loneliness and tender sadness. They also stir a mingled bittersweet comfort since we know all existence shares the same fate.” – Leonard Koren
As a traveller from the West, this is the most difficult wabi-sabi concept to embrace. This year has been awful. Beyond the ravages of the virus itself, it has been painful to watch the inadequate responses to the pandemic in certain western countries, the struggle of the Black Lives Matter movement being met with complacency and hostility, and endless days spent without financial relief for millions of people who have lost their livelihoods. The disconnection from family and friends has been unbearable.
I have been incredibly fortunate to have my health through this period, but like all people, I have watched the pain that 2020 has brought. I lost a friend to suicide during the second-wave and have spent late nights on the phone with friends struggling to speak through the relentless coughing and shortness of breath caused by covid-19. I know without a doubt that I am a fortunate one.
For the less fortunate, it is fair to ask: how can this writer honestly ask me to find any shred of beauty in all that 2020 has brought upon me?
I want to tell you that I understand that for you this year is nothing but destruction. However, if you have read this far and feel this way, I want to tell you that these moments are impermanent and a new day will come.
“While the universe destructs it also constructs. New things emerge out of nothingness…and nothingness itself – instead of being empty space as in the West – is alive with possibility.” – Leonard Koren
Admittedly, this is cold comfort in the here and now. However, I want to travel further into one particularly wabi-sabi art form that may provide guidance for those who feel shattered as we enter 2021: the Art of Kintsugi.
What is Kintsugi?
The Japanese art of Kintsugi is the practice of repairing broken pottery using gold, silver or platinum. Like Wabi-sabi, Kintsugi too has a defining philosophy that goes beyond the art form.
A vessel mended in the Kintsugi way expresses the philosophy directly — the history and trauma that the vessel has experienced is not erased. The shattered pieces are gathered up and rearranged and the vessel is made whole again in a way that embraces its past and repairs the damage with gold.
By accentuating the cracks and flaws this method of restoration gives the vessel renewed purpose and beauty, rather than simply letting its life come to an end.
Our Many Broken Plates
A broken plate can never return to its original state. For so many, this year has brought the unexpected deaths of loved ones and serious lingering illnesses for some of those that Covid-19 did not take, not to mention the many social and economic impacts of the pandemic. Our many broken plates cannot be unbroken.
I can only hope that for those whose lives have been shattered in 2020, the Art of Kintsugi can help bring some piece of mind.
In 2021, may the broken pieces of your life be fused together with gold.
The cracks will still be apparent.
We will all see them and we will know that you have suffered.
But the gold will tell us the story of your resilience, and in that is a beauty beyond compare.
Get a copy of Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosphers by Leonard Koren here:
Or visit Leonard Koren’s homepage here:
