there is a kind of beauty in imperfection.

conrad hall.

in my life, when the good days come; i know a fall is approaching. its the human predicament, just as things get sorted in one area of your life, your finances, your family or your problem that was nagging at you for months finally gets solved, another is coming around the bend. a fall that needs to be enjoyed just as much as the rise. to laugh at both sides, or simply to not be so effected or affected or bothered is perhaps the medium to strive for. if you know the approach will be both uphill and downhill it is best to take them both the same. the chase and the loss allow the energy to be created and dissipate and just like the breath is good coming in, it is also just as nice to exhale.

so i take the broken parts to heart. in the fifteenth century, when the japanese where sitting around drinking tea and pondering about what it all means, the idea of wabi sabi was created, it is defined as enjoying the imperfections, the incomplete and the cracks in things around them. At the time, when a ceramic cup was broken accidentally, they would mend it with gold but the crack would be obvious. It was these cracks they would stare at and begin to see beauty in, in the tea left in the pot, the leaves falling around and the wrinkles in the elders skin. It was in these moments that they saw the flip side of what is considered ugly, broken or banal. it can be in objects or situations, wabi sabi is all around if you simply look.

so as hunger sets in, boredom creeps up or disorder forms it is best to look at it in the positive. imagine how bad it could get or what you can take out of the situation at hand. embrace the broken, marvel at the uneven surfaces, the odd silence that sometimes comes to permeate the conversation. as covid weeded out the weak, broke the surface of our comforts and turned lives upside down for a few years, imagine how the next might feel, of what the slowdown and panic showed us about who we are, where we are and what we are doing. the scars will mend, but the residue will be left for years to come to remind us of our impermanence to so many things and the fragility of life in general.