Wabi Sabi

by Beth Kempton

  There must be something about the tone of my voice when I speak Japanese, the extra-polite language it is only appropriate to use and, perhaps, my body language, which mirrors that of the duty manager and gets him thinking. Perhaps it is the unexpectedly quiet response of the weary foreigner who just wants a hot bath and a tasty dinner, who is making no fuss and is, instead, apologising profusely, rather than being loud and brash, as visitors sometimes are, that makes him think twice.

  ‘Please sit down and enjoy your tea and cake. I’ll just pop into my office and see what I can do,’ he says, bowing and scuttling off.

  He makes a phone call and, before I can finish the welcome snack, he is back with good news. He kneels beside me, apologises again and says that the chef will make a special exception as I have travelled so far, and I am welcome to have tonight’s twelve-course meal on the house, if I would so care to partake of it? Would I ever? I am floored.

  Humility and gentleness are met with humility and gentleness. No drama. No stress. Just kindness.

  I thought about this as I tucked into my lotus root, shrimp and green peas in miso in the hotel restaurant that evening. I mulled it over as I sent a silent prayer of gratitude for the chef who had so carefully prepared the deep-fried angelica spear with simmered burdock, earthy and woody with a spicy puff of smoke. While the Nagano beef and onions cooked over a candle in front of me, I considered why our natural response to a problem is so often to launch into a reaction of stress, anger or blame. As I stirred in locally foraged mushrooms with my chopsticks, I thought about how those things rarely help to solve the problem.

  And, by the time the clam soup, local rice and pickles arrived, I had figured out three questions that can help us handle challenging situations in a calmer frame of mind. Next time you want to scream in a moment of conflict, take a deep breath, then ask yourself:

  1. How do I really feel? What’s the deeper feeling beneath the initial response of anger or frustration? Maybe it’s actually about something else – loneliness, fear, guilt or sadness, for example. This can help take the fire out of your initial response.

  2. What’s going on, and why is the person in front of me saying what they are saying? Listening carefully and trying to understand their point of view can help you understand, even if you don’t agree. This can help you calm down and respond in a much more effective way.

  3. What do I want to say and why do I feel I need to say it?

  Is it because you want to find a way to find a resolution and move beyond the situation, or is it because your ego wants you to settle a score or win an argument? Focusing on a mutual resolution, instead of competition or manipulation, can allow you to deal with the situation more calmly, and resolve it more quickly.

  Try thinking about these questions the next time you feel anger rising, or you find yourself snapping at your children, your partner or a colleague, and see if you can resolve things in a calmer way. Then notice how differently you feel when you have done that.

  Try bringing your wabi sabi world view to all of your relationships, and you’ll soon notice how different they look with this perspective.

  WABI-SABI -INSPIRED WISDOM

  FOR NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS

  • Wabi sabi opens up a space for love.

  • No one is perfect. Our connections deepen when we honour each other’s imperfections.

  • The four principles of the tea ceremony – harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity – can help us develop good relationships.

  TRY IT: CHANNELLING THE SPIRIT OF THE TEA CEREMONY IN DAILY LIFE

  Think of someone you are particularly close to – perhaps a spouse, a child, a parent, a friend or a work colleague. Make a note of ways in which you could apply the principles below in your day-to-day relationship with them. Your answers might be either emotional or practical suggestions.

  Wa (harmony)

  • What could you do more of to encourage harmony?

  • What could you do less of?

  • What could you do differently?

  • What could you try for the first time?

  • What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?

  • What details of their life could you notice, and pay more attention to?

  • What is that person’s natural rhythm? How could you consider that more in your life together? (For example, timing of important conversations, giving them space after a long day, suggesting they have a lie-in after a hard week.)

  • How could you help them consider your natural rhythm more in your life together?

  • What could you share about yourself that would help them support you?

  Kei (respect)

  • What do you respect about this person? How could you let them know about this?

  • In what ways could you offer them kindness right now?

  • In what ways could you show humility in your relationship with them?

  Sei (purity)

  • When you look for the best in this person, what do you see?

  • How could you let them know about this?

  • Think back to the last time you had some kind of conflict with them. If you had approached it with a commitment to seeing the best in them, even in the middle of the conflict, what might have been different?

  • List all the ways you care for this person. Find a lovely way to tell them.

  Jaku (tranquillity)

  • How could you nurture a sense of calm in your relationship?

  • Are there particular times or scenarios where you tend to react in an emotionally charged way? How might you benefit from approaching a conflict situation with harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity? (It may not be easy, but it can make a huge difference.)

  • How could you proactively build more space and peace into your time together?

  I can’t imagine having a career conversation with a Japanese person in which the topic of wabi sabi comes up. The word ‘career’ brings to mind striving, competition, pressure, a particular goal. Wabi sabi evokes pretty much the opposite of all those things. But having spent almost a decade helping people to shift to a career that lights them up, or to find new ways to fall back in love with the one they already have, I can see that there is actually much we can learn by viewing our careers through the lens of wabi sabi .

  That core teaching of wabi sabi – that everything is impermanent, imperfect and incomplete – feels to me like a giant permission slip to explore and experiment within your career. Although we tend to think about a career as a linear thing, wabi sabi reminds us that life is cyclical, and we can have more than one ‘career’ in our lifetime. This chapter is all about how to enjoy the career journey , and that starts with understanding where you are right now, so you can choose how to move forward.

  The virtuous cycle of perfect imperfection

  The conflicting desires to fit in yet stand out, keep up and surge ahead, all in pursuit of an elusive perfection over there is a huge distraction from the life you already have over here.

  In my work, I have come to realise just how influential the lure of perfection can be, and not in a good way. It seeps into every area of people’s lives, not least in their careers, crushing confidence and self-esteem, and raising anxiety and stress levels. It also has a practical impact on how people allocate their precious resources – in particular, time and money.

  The five main career scenarios that I come across in my work are:

  1. ‘I love my job but find it too stressful. I’m not sure if I want a career change, or a job change or just to find a better way of working.’

  2. ‘I hate my job, but feel stuck (by a lack of self-confidence or ideas about what else I could do) or trapped (by circumstances, such as finances or commitments).’

  3. ‘My job’s OK and it pays the bills but … [or ‘I am good at my job but …] I dream of something else [very often something more creative], although the idea of actually doing it terrifies me.’

  4. ‘My main job recently has bee
n parenting. I am planning to go back to work, but need more flexibility in my working hours or arrangements, and I’m not sure my old job is even right for me any more.’ Alternatively, ‘I am proud of the time I have spent raising my children, but I want something for myself now they are older.’

  5. ‘I have been made redundant and I cannot figure out whether it is a nightmare or a blessing in disguise.’

  In nearly all cases, what my clients think is the issue, is rarely the actual issue. Lots of people cite ‘money’ and ‘time’ as their main challenges, but that is usually a matter of some smart prioritising (and Chapter 8 includes some tips to help you with that). It’s also often the case that they are in the dark about just how many opportunities there are nowadays for flexible and remote working, or running our own businesses.

  However, beneath all the resistance to change and the feelings of ‘stuckness’, lies the real block: fear of not being good enough; fear of not knowing enough; fear of failure; fear of making a move without knowing how it will work out; fear of losing control (not that we are in control in the first place); fear of not being perfect. And although each person’s situation is different, I have seen a pattern emerging – a vicious cycle of ‘failing at perfection’, which looks something like this:

  We can use all the wabi-sabi -inspired wisdom and tools I have shared in this book to break this cycle, as we accept the idea of impermanence, imperfection and incompleteness as the natural state of all things. But there is also a huge amount to be gained by simply relaxing, being gentler on ourselves and making the choice to enjoy the journey.

  Collectively, this can help us shift to a ‘perfectly imperfect’ virtuous cycle like this:

  Use your wabi-sabi -inspired tools

  Whenever I am on a panel or run open forums for people in business, I am almost always asked a question related to competition, comparison or enough-ness. It’s very hard to run a business with your eyes open and your ear to the ground and not find yourself comparing your ‘success’ to the ‘success’ of others.

  This is also true in the world of salaried work. It’s difficult to stay alert to what is going on in your workplace and your industry without running into situations that encourage comparison and competition. For as long as this helps you aspire to something you genuinely want, it can be helpful. But as soon as it detracts you from your own path, it can be damaging.

  The thing to remember is this: someone else’s success does not hinder your chances of achieving what you want. Their success may even open up new opportunities for you and others. They will walk their path; you are supposed to walk yours. You have everything you need to go wherever you want to go.

  It’s just as important to use your tools for nurturing relationships, reframing failure and accepting your perfectly imperfect self at work as it is to use them in your life outside work. If you show up with integrity and allow your inner beauty to shine, any workplace and any client will be lucky to have you. If they don’t show you their appreciation, check in with your heart and see if it’s time to move on.

  The imperfect path your heart guides you along is the perfect path for you.

  Look beneath the surface of your current career

  Not long ago, I was in an external meeting where the icebreaker was: ‘If we take away your work, what else do we find?’ One of the women there froze. You could see the dawning of a realisation moving like a wave through her body. ‘Nothing. I am my work. And I didn’t realise that until this moment. Oh wow, I wasn’t expecting that. Something needs to change.’

  That woman is one of the most brilliant, inspiring, funny and warm people I know. And yet she couldn’t come up with anything to say about her life that wasn’t connected with work. I happen to know that she has a half-finished manuscript tucked away in her desk, a deep love of travel and a circle of lovely friends. But she had pushed all those things away in the pursuit of an elusive goal of career perfection, with the result that her work had moved in and swallowed up all the space. It had become all about what was on the surface – the achievements, the appraisals, the promotions, the salary and status, the mantle of busyness. She had, as do so many of us, forgotten that what lies beneath matters too.

  So let’s take a moment to remind ourselves of those four emotional underlayers of Japanese beauty, and see what happens if we layer them over our career paths:

  Mono no aware

  An awareness of the fleeting beauty of life.

  1. What is good in your career right now?

  2. Consider the life and career stage you are in and complete this sentence: ‘Now is the moment to …’

  3. What do you need to do first, in order to make the most of this moment?

  Yūgen

  The depth of the world as seen with our imagination. The beauty of mystery, and of realising we are a small part of something so much greater than ourselves.

  1. How much are you trying to control the direction of your career path? What might happen if you let go a little, and opened up to mystery?

  2. What deeper purpose are you serving or could you serve with your career?

  3. If you have untended dreams that have been shelved for too long, what kind of changes could you make to your working arrangements to give them some attention?

  Wabi

  The feeling generated by recognising the beauty found in simplicity. The sense of quiet contentment found away from the trappings of a materialistic world.

  1. How could you simplify your work life? How could you proactively reduce your workload and streamline communications to focus only on what really matters?

  2. How could you minimise the drama, avoid the politics and gossip, and invite more calm into your working day?

  3. If you are overworked due to your perfectionist tendencies, what space might open up for you if you trusted someone else with some of your work?

  4. If you feel like you are just working to pay the bills, could you take a fresh look at your finances, and figure out a way to live more simply, so the burden on your work is not so heavy?

  5. Does your work come easily to you? In what ways are you using your natural talents? How could you do this more?

  Sabi

  A deep and tranquil beauty that emerges with the passage of time.

  1. How has your career ripened over the years? What have you learned?

  2. Are you trying to force your career too fast? What difference would it make if you relaxed into the rhythm of it, allowing the richness to build over time?

  3. If you feel it’s time for a change, what skills have you picked up that could serve you elsewhere? What have you learned in the great school of life that could serve the next stage of your career?

  Just as these emotional elements of beauty are of great importance in Japanese aesthetics, they can be important guides on your career path. They require pause, attention, tuning in and being open to wonder.

  Life in contemporary Japan

  For a period of over two hundred years from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was virtually closed off from the world through a national isolationist policy known as sakoku . This ended when Commodore Matthew Perry and his famous ‘Black Ships’ arrived in Tōkyō Bay from America in 1853 and forced Japan to open to trade once again. Within five years Japan had signed treaties with other countries including the United Kingdom and Russia.

  The influx of ideas and technology that followed had an irreversible effect on the lifestyle of the Japanese. The country’s subsequent rise, post-World War Two, from economic insignificance to world player, brought with it Westernisation – Western clothes, Western style and, to some extent, Western thinking. Since then, Japan has become a hi-tech, high-earnings world. The people have become affluent and a high standard of living prevails. With this new-found wealth have come the rapid growth of cities, a proliferation of skyscrapers and the famous bullet train.

  Even if you have never been to Japan, you probably have an image of what wo
rking life looks like. Perhaps it involves suited ‘salarymen’ or the unfortunately named ‘OL’ (office ladies), packed into commuter trains by white-gloved station officials; or exhausted workers nodding off on their journey home. Maybe the Japan in your mind’s eye is the iconic image of pedestrians surging forward at Shibuya Crossing, under the glow of neon signs and giant screens – thousands of people with somewhere to be.

  Tōkyō has an incredible energy, and millions of people do live this commuter life there, and in cities across Japan. I was one of them many moons ago, and there were aspects of it that I loved. But more than ever, as in so many places around the world, options are opening up for people who don’t want to live and work in such a hurry any more.

  The slow revolution

  Nestled deep in the mountains of Shimane Prefecture lies the charming town of Ōmori-chō. At its peak, a couple of centuries ago, the surrounding area of Iwami-Ginzan bustled with the energy of 200,000 people serving one of the world’s largest silver mines. But when the mine closed in 1923, the town, like many former mining communities, slowly began to die. At one point, Ōmori-chō’s population dwindled and may have disappeared completely were it not for a huge local effort, including that of one pioneering couple, the Matsubas, who moved here in the early 1980s and helped breathe new life into the place. Now Iwami-Ginzan is recognised as a beacon of sustainable development by UNESCO. 1

  Designer Tomi Matsuba and her husband, Daikichi, moved here nearly four decades ago, with their young daughter. Ōmori-chō was Daikichi’s home town, and they thought the gentle pace of life would better suit their young family than Nagoya, where they lived. With few opportunities for work, Tomi began making patchworks from old fabrics, which her husband sold into retail stores. This was the humble beginning of a business that has gone on to become a leader in Japan’s slow clothing scene, 2 with stores nationwide under the brand name ‘Gungendō’ 3 (which takes its name from a Chinese word meaning ‘a place where everyone has their say’). Their company now employs around fifty local residents, and many more in their stores nationwide.