Sometime back I got introduced to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. It is about the acceptance of things as they are rather than how they should be, and I find it beautiful in the way it celebrates history and the passage of time, respects the loving use or overuse of things that may no longer be deemed worthy. I am drawn to it like I was, many years ago, to Leonard Cohen’s words in his song ‘Anthem’: ‘There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’. These ideas reaffirm my own love for things that are simple, incomplete, or broken. Or fleeting, like the visiting light, appearing and disappearing, rhythmically, in an endless loop of touch and go. Old, like a wooden mirror shaped in my grandfather’s simplicity, bearer of multiple stories of grooming, daydreaming.

It is little fragments of beauty like these scattered here and there, undesirous of attention, that I hope to continue never looking past.

The stillness of fallen leaves and petals that adorn the post-rain water, stagnant, in my garden pot.

Two cracks, elegantly shaped, like thoughts along the blank canvas of the wall.

A dot of sun that swims in the muddy pool of rainwater

The dragonfly, caught in water, dressed in light and grace, even when unmoving.

The rain-filled dent in the ground, catching reflections, like it was earth’s own mirror.

The dust and the cobwebs on my windowpane, a colony of faraway stars or neural networks in the human body.

In being a witness to these moments, I am made aware of the need to accept my own imperfections, and to see myself in a gentler, kinder light. Though it is true that when it comes to myself and how I see other humans, this is a direction I have to steer myself in, and I do it, not always successfully. Still, I hope I can turn to it every time I need to remind myself that we are after all, cast in nature’s mould, and what a gift that is. To be in a constant state of flux, and to be present to and mindful of all that shows up. And to embrace it.