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Wabi-sabi Acceptance and Love for the Imperfect Body
Learning to feel valuable in all my imperfections
My family always tried to make me feel beautiful.
Actually no, they tried to make me feel valuable.
There is a concept in Japan on aesthetics, a term that reads as “wabi-sabi” — to appreciate beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”, for it is natural. It is a concept often used in interior design and landscaping, that there is beauty in things placed and positioned as they are rather than trying to be perfect with every detail.
But even if you are not an artist or designer, this applies to you. As humans, as living beings that grow and constantly change, the way we look is impermanent. We are imperfect and incomplete, but that is how we were made to exist and is part of our value.
Easy said, but it is a concept that was hard for me to accept at first.
Especially being an individual growing up with social media when I was a particularly impressionable age, I was bombarded with images and videos of perfectly perfect moments, of flawless looks and immaculate style. I wanted to look a certain way, and I wanted to look that way all the time. I was made to believe I should look like that all the time.
