wabi-sabi: loving for the crack, chips, and patinas

Wabi-sabi is the Japanese idea of embracing the imperfect, of celebrating the worn, the cracked, the patinaed, both as a decorative concept and a spiritual one — it's an acceptance of the toll that life takes on us all. As I wrote about it earlier this year, "If we can learn to love the things that already exist, for all their chips and cracks, their patinas, their crooked lines or tactile evidence of being made by someone's hands instead of a machine, from being made from natural materials that vary rather than perfect plastic, we wouldn't need to make new stuff, reducing our consumption (and its concurrent energy use and inevitable waste), cutting our budgets, and saving some great stories for future generations." We might also be less stressed, and more attentive to the details, which are the keys to mindfulness.  

via {mother nature network}