The Anti-Poem: Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-Sabi
For those of you who may not know, there’s a Japanese Philosophy,
They call it: Wabi-Sabi.
It’s hardly translatable, but what we know is stable:
There is beauty in faults and complexity.
The perfectly imperfect surrounds our daily life,
And flush us with reasons to accept failure without strife.
Most often, we deny them, and cry our salty tears,
But in success, we look back, to find after failure,
We are here.
I’ll give you an example of what it means,
To experience and love, the Wabi-Sabi dream.
It’s old stained wood, instead of shiny slate floors,
And cracked pots left cracked, to show it’s aged and worn.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder they say,
And maybe when we seek the beauty in what doesn’t go our way,
The Earth is telling us to see,
That perfectly imperfect is the way it should be.
Buried deep in our minds there is a place,
Where we concoct our feelings and process the dysfunction we face.
Hidden in wrinkles of family and quirks of friends,
We may find that with imperfection, there is no end.
What it takes is the mindset,
That flaws can be an asset.
That life cannot be wholly beautiful without mistakes and troubles,
For how else could we see the simple joy in children chasing bubbles.
They say it takes a quiet mind, to value muted beauty.
That’s because a quiet mind has space to accept its rustic duty.
Like seeing a life in leather that’s worn,
And through listening to stories, to mend hearts that are torn.
Our life is a sort of cache, of memories and dreams.
The two can be confused, when we are ambitious enough to see,
That a dream can become, reality.
We believe in what we know, and we know in what we believe,
That’s because we trust in what happens, but only subconsciously.
What Wabi-Sabi says, is that consciously appreciating, the simple forms of joy,
May come with challenges and barriers we wish to destroy.
In a world competing for perfection, this philosophy reminds,
That there are days when clouds are more perfect than warm sunshine.
And when the thunder sends your pup running under the bed,
Remember the days when fears were like cobwebs caught up in your head.
So, do your work and be kind to your friends.
Tell people when you love them, so that they don’t forget.
Not every day is perfect, just breathe when you are stressed.
If you let it into your life, Wabi-Sabi will do the rest.
Read here to learn how scary it was to write this anti-poem & accept the Fear Challenge.
#poetry #antipoetry #wabisabi #japanesephilosophy #fear
