Can I get some wabi-sabi with that?

I know this will come as a complete shock to many of you, but I am not perfect.  I can be vain, proud, foolish, and quite impatient with my fellow human kind.  I have many physical imperfections as well, scars, lumps, and all the stretch marks that accompany giving birth to three children.  I try hard, but mostly fail, at being more empathetic.  I eat healthy foods and run four days a week, but still weigh more than I did in college and will never achieve a thigh gap.  There are days that I arise, look at myself in the mirror, and ask, "What is so wrong with me?"

Nothing that a little wabi-sabi can't fix.  Wabi-sabi is the Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection and accepts the natural cycles of decay and death.  Wabi-sabi acknowledges that cracks and crevices give character, that weathering and withering bring grace, that rust and rot are earned through life's experiences.  I find this idea refreshing, liberating even.  Our culture is consumed with a desperate hair dye and face lift fueled attempt to claim the fountain of youth.  What would happen if we chose to abandon that futile pursuit and instead embraced the imperfections of life?

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, born in 1839 in Russia, was a gifted, passionate composer of tremendous influence and stature.  Mussorgsky was introduced into the artistic life of St. Petersburg where he became a part of "The Mighty Five," a group of composers who were dedicated to celebrating and promoting Russian music.  Mussorgsky pursued this by composing music that embraced every day events in Russian life.  Listen to this charming Hopak, a popular Cossack dance.  Sadly Mussorgsky fell victim to the most terrible of Russian artistic cliches, alcoholism and poverty.  After years of steady decline in health, bouts of depression, extreme destitution, and alcoholic seizures, he died at the age of 42, leaving most of his compositions unfinished and unedited.

So what do we do with this imperfect man?  Do we bury his music in a trunk, saying, "Too bad it's not finished, but hey, not our fault, he was a drunken bum?"  Thankfully his friends realized his worth, flawed as he was, and saved his legacy.  Rimsky-Korsakov re-orchestrated and finished the ever-popular Night on Bald Mountain.  The opera Khovanshchina was finished and edited by Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovitch, Stravinsky, and Ravel.  And of course we all enjoy the superb Ravel orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition.  Mussorgsky's great talent continues to inspire because his wise colleagues refused to throw away a broken human being.

It's time for me to go running.  I'm going to rejoice in every fumbling step, in every tired mile, in every twinge of my aging knee, that I have attained some character and grace and that my beauty lies not in being perfect, but in being one who has lived.

Having a hamburger for lunch?  Wouldn't you like some wabi-sabi with that?

Modest Mussorgsky

Wabi-sabi