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4 Japanese Concepts That Inspire Our Daily Lives
"Wabi-sabi"
Wabi-sabi (The beauty of imperfection) is a Japanese aesthetic and worldview accepting transience and imperfection, embracing a beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
Derived from Buddhist teachings, its central teachings are around asymmetry, simplicity, asperity, and appreciation of the inherent integrity of natural objects and materials.
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Key Ideas
The beautiful mess effect
We don't expect other people to be perfect but appreciate when people show their vulnerabilities and admit errors. Yet, we're afraid to expose our own shortcomings.
This is known as "the beautiful mess effect." We see other people's honesty about their flaws as positive, and our own as problematic. Other people's flaws function more like an instructive tale as the distance gives us perspective.
Don't waste your experiences
Things fall apart for everyone. If you're wise, you can be resourceful and use the scraps, patch yourself up, and keep going.
Professor Brené Brown states that "vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me." Brown sees the imperfections in people as gifts to be worked with, not embarrassments to be hidden.
The ordinary in extraordinary
The physical evidence of a life well-lived can be a source of pride rather than shame. We don't have to hide the white hair, lined skin, scars, or extra pounds. They can be seen as signs that you persist.
When we expect perfection from everyone, including ourselves, we not only discount much of what is beautiful but create an unrealistic, restrictive, and cruel world where people's flaws are highlighted. Instead, we should highlight the beauty of what we do have, flaws and all, rather than always grasping for more.
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Key Ideas
Nostalgia
It is the sentimentality of our past, usually for a particular time and place associated with positive emotions, etched in our memories. Historical texts state it was termed as homesickness during war times.
It is now considered a natural, common emotion, a way to escape from the current 'space-time' and mentally travel to one's past when the world around us was different. It is usually prompted by a feeling of loneliness, disconnectedness or meaninglessness, triggered by thoughts about the past, by our senses of smell and touch or through music or weather.
A Time Machine
The feeling of nostalgia is like traveling in a time machine. The activities that were once cherished are no longer done, and the world that is remembered no longer exists.
Nostalgia can be a form of self-deception, giving a rosy tint to the past, creating a paradise out of the moments of our lived lives.
Deep nostalgia fosters a sense of serene melancholy and spiritual longing.
Suffering
The deepest form of suffering is a feeling of extreme dissatisfaction about the impermanence and the insubstantiality of everything around us.
Buddhism mentions suffering as inevitable as long as there is desire, lust and a sense of coveting/craving in our lives. Once we grasp this fully, we stop craving and struggling in hope and fear.