“Wabi Sabi” Life
Whether life needs me or not, whether I am worthy or not, I love it. I love its simplicity. I love how the sun rises quietly bringing light to a dark world. I love how the birds start singing. I love how the sun sets allowing time for rest. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet and the scent of wisteria on the air. I love the way that tree grows crookedly up between other trees seeking light. I love when it rains quietly and when it pours wildly. I love laughing joyously. I love crying freely. I love being alive! I get to be alive! I am alive! I realized. I cannot control life at all. It just is.
~excerpt from More
April 15, 2015
Yesterday I was cleaning my office, trying to create order once again. The recycling bin had overflowed, and the piles stacked everywhere, comprised of random bills, things to remember, upcoming events, and business notes, no longer made sense. I sighed. It was a mess.
As I was sorting the paper into keep and throw away piles, however, I came across all kinds of random thoughts that I had jotted down and seemingly forgotten. The writings were on scraps of paper, half-written spiral notebooks, yellow note pads. They were interspersed amongst to do lists, travel itineraries and business documents. These random introspective thoughts, I realized, reflected perfectly my experience of late—haphazard, messy, unfocused, but unexpectedly poignant and beautiful, nonetheless. It’s as if, in the periphery of my hectic life, there was a part reading between the lines, noticing the beauty, the “More” of life and appreciating it.
On one scrap of paper, titled “Out of the Corner of My Eye,” I had written:
“Out of the corner of my eye, I see the truth . . . that life is beautiful, that existence itself is a miracle. I sense the glory often—but too often I see life face on. I see the content of life. I see suffering. And suffering comes from the weaving of sad stories, from stories that weave webs of fear and loneliness.
Just today, my friend, Terry, was struggling unable to see anything but a broken arm, a broken car, stuck in the loneliness of the wee hours in a blackness that felt bleak, not deep. I know that place too.
I want to enfold her in my arms—to tell her everything is okay, nothing is wrong. That life is a beautiful, rich tapestry—that she is a beautiful rich integral part of that. Soften your gaze I want to say. This too shall pass. And, while I may not have arms big enough to enfold all of suffering, Life does.
Just out of the corner of my eye I can see the truth, can you?
Another one said:
My life—all of it: spiritual worldview, material worldview, being happy, being stuck—is my practice. There is no part of my life that is not an opportunity. Of course I have known this intellectually, but it hit me organically this morning on my walk.
Another, referencing a Japanese worldview centered on the art of imperfection, said more simply,
“I am Wabi Sabi, and that’s okay.”
Life itself, I reflect now—like my office, like my random thoughts, like the tree growing crookedly up between other trees—is Wabi Sabi perfect, just as it is.
sacred journey to more 