TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

It’s normal, I think, to want to be and do better. Self-improvement is a good thing, right? We try to improve as parents and as spouses, to be better supports to the people we love. We try to improve at our jobs, to be more effective and efficient, and — hopefully — more fulfilled by what we do. We try to eat better, look better, feel better.

Nothing is wrong with any of this, at its core, but it can also slip into unhealthy territory — when we feel like we’re not good enough. Not perfect.

In Japanese culture, there’s a philosophy that speaks back to perfectionism: wabi-sabi. It’s a perspective, a way of seeing, that places value on the imperfect nature of life. Wabi refers to a sense of simplicity and understated elegance. Sabi is concerned with the passage of time and the way all things grow, age, and decay.

When we put the two together, we value imperfections and asymmetry. We value what is old and full of history over what is shiny and new. So a handmade rug with some mistakes in the stitching would be considered more beautiful than a perfect, machine-woven rug. A garden where moss has grown in the cracks of broken pavers is appreciated for its marks made by nature, not for human dominance.

I think we in the West have much to learn from this traditional Japanese philosophy. We might do well to remember wabi-sabi when we look in the mirror, when we struggle in our relationships or our jobs, when we think about the kinds of people we want to be.

Today’s poem invites us to celebrate what is, rather than what could be — so it invites us to accept ourselves exactly as we are.

Wabi-Sabi
by Catherine Esposito Prescott

I want the makeshift bridge, rickety
splintered wood planks, the missing
ones like knocked-out teeth, banister
ropes with slack smiles, the sway

and push back of each step. I want
the rock-worn, unpaved road,
the unmarked trail, gnarled trees
and tangled grass. I want the uncrested

wave, its blue unfrothed top,
and the broken shell under blankets
of sand, the crab circling the seafloor
on one leg waiting for the other

to grow back. I want the manic spiral
of my hair on a humid day, the frizz
that coils like antennae to whatever
frequency it finds. The chipped tooth,

the detached nail, the split ends, 
calloused feet and unpainted toes. I want
to walk the rough edges of day, to wake
hours before sunrise in the unfinished

dream as it echoes and fades, to sit
in the conversation without closure,
in the half-written song, in the half-heard
heart, on the edge of a broken lip, in the thick

stutter of the incomplete word, in the dip-
thong before it rises, in the note reaching 
for pitch, in the mind’s miasma shooting
thought-stars to the cracked synapse, and listen.

"Wabi-Sabi" by Catherine Esposito Prescott. Used by permission of the poet.