Text by Gretchen Roberts

Right now in my house, the wall that leads upstairs — which the previous owners unwisely painted in a matte finish — bears a trail of small fingerprints. This used to signal another to-do on my list: “Clean those fingerprints off the wall.” Again.

But lately, rather than sigh over the decay of my pristine home, I’ve been learning to embrace wabi sabi, the Japanese art of appreciating the beauty in the naturally imperfect world.

I no longer see those fingerprints as blemishes to be expunged from the wall on my daily roundup of chores, but as the story of my daughters’ nightly treks up to bed.

Wabi sabi is an ancient aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism, particularly the tea ceremony, a ritual of purity and simplicity in which masters prized bowls that were handmade and irregularly shaped, with uneven glaze, cracks, and a perverse beauty in their deliberate imperfection.

The Japanese philosophy celebrates beauty in what’s natural, flaws and all. The antique bowls above are prized because of (not in spite of) their drips and cracks.

What if we learned to prize the drips and cracks in our messy lives?

Humble Virtues


In the world according to Zen, words only hinder true enlightenment; reducing wabi sabi to mere language seems like sacrilege to its spirit. But loosely translated, “wabi” is simplicity, whether elegant or rustic; “sabi” means the beauty of age and wear.

Leonard Koren, author of

“Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers,”

tried unsuccessfully to discover a precise definition while researching his book. He eventually coined his own, which has become standard for authors in the West: “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.”

To illustrate: Wabi sabi is asymmetrical heirloom vegetables and handmade pottery, crow’s feet and the frayed sleeves of a favorite wool sweater, exposed brick and the first draft of a difficult letter.

You won’t find wabi sabi in Botox, glass-and-steel skyscrapers, smart phones, or the drive for relentless self-improvement. It’s a beauty hidden right in front of our eyes, an aesthetic of simplicity that reveals itself only when animated through the daily work of living.

In

“The Unknown Craftsman,”

Japanese art critic Soetsu Yanagi writes, “We in our own human imperfections are repelled by the perfect, since everything is apparent from the start and there is no suggestion of the infinite.”

As a wine writer, I am far less drawn to generic, technically correct wines than to wines with complexity — even if that complexity comes with a whiff of fault. A perfect wine is too obvious, while one with nuance (“bottled poetry,” as Robert Louis Stevenson calls it) leaves room for exploration of the unknown.

Yet a badly made wine won’t pass muster with my critical palate; nor are stained plastic dishes or a weed-infested garden wabi sabi in their defects. A wabi sabi approach to life isn’t about giving way to carelessness or seeing a junk pile through rose-colored glasses. It’s about appreciating, showcasing, and sustaining the beauty of what’s natural.

Nothing about nature is linear or symmetrical or impervious to decay. And yet what could be more mesmerizing?

Abandoning “Perfect”


I think of the paraphernalia my young daughters pick up on our walks, things I stopped noticing long ago — discarded feathers, stones worn shiny by water. They’re drawn to these treasures for their expressive textures, shapes, and colors, each thing unique in the world. So miraculous just the way they are, and yet so simple.

In our culture, “simplicity” is often code for a life that’s meticulously organized or for spare, boutique perfection. We’re brought up to strive for the best, the brightest, and most extraordinary. It may not be natural to us to seek pleasure in the quotidian, let alone a Japanese concept that celebrates rust.

But what could be more radically simple than acceptance? As Richard Powell, author of

“Wabi Sabi Simple,”

told me, “Accepting the world as imperfect, unfinished, and transient, and then going deeper and celebrating that reality, is something not unlike freedom.”

I find the idea of abandoning “perfect” and even “good enough” irresistibly tempting. Life — the fingerprints, scars, and laugh lines — is itself perfectly imperfect, and I can embrace the beauty in that.