What's Your Wabi Sabi?

Wabi Sabi… a beautiful Japanese concept of simplicity and elegance in understatement.

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Wabi Sabi is a Japanese phrase that expresses a sense of peacefulness and beauty in imperfection. It is serene. It is elegant in its simplicity. It is often ordinary. Plain. Yet, the more you rest in its everyday being-ness, the more it becomes stunningly beautiful.

Things can be wabi sabi. So can places. Or experiences.

I can think of three things right off the top of my head that are wabi sabi in my life.

1. My morning cup of coffee. Sitting in the same chair, sipping out of the same mug, slowly coming into awakeness.

2. The messy smudged hand print of my son on the windowpane. It is small. It is right in the middle. It captures a moment in time when he was looking outside, pressed up against the glass, babbling to the birds and squirrels in the back yard.

3. My tattered, shredded “blankie” from when I was a baby. It really is in shreds, sitting in a bag in my closet. It can only be used for stuffing at this point, but I will never transform it. Ever.

This children’s book is a lovely take on the concept of wabi sabi. I think the book is wabi sabi in its essence.

And, this short film from the author, Mark Reibstein, and artist, Ed Young, explain the concept further…