I recently learned of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi. It essentially means an acceptance of imperfection, incompleteness or impermanence in regard to beauty. You may find pottery or furniture made to deliberately be imperfect.
The West and their influence have been to celebrate perfection. We see this in everything from design to fashion. We now see a celebration of OCD online with ‘satisfying’ or ‘unsatisfying’ titles. We see our role models determined to stay youthful and beautiful with Photoshop erasing the realities. We have allowed ourselves to be told that perfection is attainable, desirable and even expected. Everyday people check their social media to see contrived images of everyone else looking and doing better
Wabi-sabi is the antithesis of everything we have strived for in our lives but perhaps a little wabi-sabi would alleviate the eating disorders, depression, jealousy and angst our societies are now riddled with.
© 2018 David G Chambers. All rights reserved.
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