The
decorations are now packed, hidden away until next year and the holiday
gatherings and celebrations are over. We are now back to the demands of our ordinary,
everyday life.
For
many, there is a certain melancholic letdown after the holidays, and I must
admit I am who feels a little bummed when January 2nd rolls around. Facing
the long, cold dark winter months ahead as the festive light-filled excitement
slides away from us can turn into days of plaintive indifference.
As
a result, I tend to rush through the dreary, drab days of winter with my eyes
closed, dashing quickly as my mind focuses on the more scenic and colorful
times that come with summer. I do this even though I know I’m missing a lot
beauty that is hidden in the chill, frost and ice.
It
is during times like these when I try to bounce out of my darkened reverie and borrow
a concept attributed to Japanese culture when things are not as neat and pretty
as I wish. The term is “wabi sabi” and it is loosely interpreted to mean
“perfect imperfection”. It is the mindset that we find beauty in flaws and
expand our experience of the magnificence that most often can only be seen with
eyes of the heart.
Author,
Robyn Griggs Lawrence, in her article, “Wabi-Sabi: The Art of Imperfection”
expresses
the concept with perfection (no pun intended). “Wabi-sabi understands the
tender, raw beauty of a gray December landscape and the aching elegance of an
abandoned building or shed. It celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all
the other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. To discover
wabi-sabi is to see the singular beauty in something that may first look
decrepit and ugly.”
Lawrence
goes on to point out that having the ability to see beauty in the
unpleasantries requires only the imagination. “It doesn’t require money,
training, or special skills. It takes a mind quiet enough to appreciate muted
beauty, courage not to fear bareness, willingness to accept things as they
are—without ornamentation. It depends on the ability to slow down, to shift the
balance from doing to being, to appreciating rather than perfecting.”
So,
this morning on my walk, instead of cursing the cold and icy pavement beneath
my feet, I attempted Lawrence’s suggestions. Instead of rushing through my
daybreak exercise in the normal single-minded fashion, I slowed down to look
-REALLY LOOK- around me and was surprised that the author might be correct in
her advice.
I
saw bird tracks in the snow. I heard the wind. I felt the snowflakes on my
exposed skin. “When was the last time I noticed these things?”, I wondered.
It
was then that I truly realized I can complain, moan and be displeased about the
cold and gloomy days - or I can create and thus see the splendor around me.
Either way, I have to get through the letdown of past celebrations and through
winter somehow, someway. It might behoove me and those close to me to give the
ol’ winter wabi sabi thing a whirl.
Nothing
is flawless and nothing last forever, including the holiday letdown most of us
feel. And, if I can pick myself up by my blue polka-dotted Bog bootstraps and
see the charm around me even the smallest “birdtrack in the snow” sense, then I
know I can make it until summer with a bit of joy. That, I think I can handle
and is – for me - perfection imperfection!
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