Wabi-Sabi

There is a question your culture has answered, probably without your knowledge. What makes something beautiful? The answer your aesthetic environment most likely gave you goes something like this: symmetry, polish, completion, newness. A flawless surface. A perfect form. Something finished. If a bowl is chipped, you throw it out, or hide it at the back of the cabinet, or use it only when no guests are coming. The damage is the problem. The damage is what needs to be fixed or removed. This is a reasonable answer. It is also only one answer. And it has consequences for how you see yourself, your work, your spaces, your life. Wabi-sabi is not easy to translate, and part of that difficulty is instructive. It is sometimes rendered as "rustic imperfection," but that flattens it. Wabi, historically, suggested a kind of elegant poverty — the beauty found in simplicity, in what has been stripped away. Sabi suggested the beauty of age and wear. Patina. The way iron rusts into something more interesting than the original surface.