by Beth Kempton
• What other major experiences have you had?
• What particular moments of fleeting beauty stand out in your memory?
Next, on a double page, draw a horizontal timeline, with vertical lines to mark each decade (or every five years if you are under thirty). Looking at your answers to the above questions, map out the most important experiences so far in your life. Mark any points when you had an ‘Aha’ moment.
Now draw lines between the things that are connected in some way. What had to happen for something else to happen? What themes can you see?
Now, with all the information in front of you, answer these questions:
• What have been the most important career decisions affecting your happiness along the way?
• What or who are you particularly grateful for on your career path to date?
• What do you need right now?
• What is the one thing you could do to step into the next phase of your career with intention and trust, whether that is deepening what you already do or moving in a new direction?
N ight has fallen, and I am running a little late. Clutching a bottle of wine I can’t really afford, I stare wide-eyed at the shrine gate ahead of me. I am actually here. Pinching myself, I pass through the gate, and turn left to the rambling, old house, known by the shrine name Tenmangū. The low hum of excited chatter floats through the air, mingling with the gentle croaking of a hundred frogs. I think about the gathered guests and almost turn to leave. At nineteen, I am intimidated by the prospect of a room full of Japan scholars, linguists, art dealers and other people with far more knowledge on just about everything than me. And I don’t know a soul.
But then I remember what brought me here. How Lost Japan, a wonderful book written by the owner of this house, encouraged me through my high-school exams, promising mystery and adventure, if only I could get into university. How every time I struggled to write another essay, I picked up the book, read a couple of pages and was inspired to do one more hour.
On arrival in Kyōto, I sent a note to thank the author, Alex Kerr, long-time Japan resident and now one of the country’s most famous cultural observers. To my surprise, I received a letter back from his assistant, inviting me to this party at his home, one of the enchanting places I read about in Lost Japan.
The house, and the company, do not disappoint. I spend most of the evening observing fascinating conversations about East Asian history, politics, antiques and all sorts of other things I feel unqualified to talk about. But just being here, in this centuries-old house, in among it all, is enough. At one point we are invited into the old doma, or kitchen area, now used for a writing studio. Open to the rafters, somehow everything in this space seems magnified. A giant sheet of mulberry paper has been spread out on the long table and, huge brush in hand, Alex Kerr is doing some of the most beautiful calligraphy I have ever seen.
Time slows. Voices soften. People seem to be frozen in position, smiles on their faces, candlelight throwing shadows across the room. I think, This moment is special. Tuck it inside your pocket of treasures for safekeeping .
A couple of decades on, many details of that day are blurry, but that moment, which I chose to keep as a precious treasure, remains as clear as if it were yesterday.
The real kind of perfect
I’ll let you into a secret. ‘Perfect’ is actually one my favourite words. I use it all the time, but only ever in the context of moments. I believe that is the only occasion perfection is real. The tiniest slice of time can hover, shimmering in momentary stillness. And then it is gone. A perfect moment in an imperfect world.
That moment in Alex Kerr’s studio at Tenmangū was perfect. The moment I sat in my hospital bed looking out over the sea, holding my precious newborn baby to my chest as the sun rose, knowing that this second child would be my last, was perfect. The moment this morning when I exchanged an unspoken word with a sparrow looking in on me at my writing desk, was perfect.
In a world constantly in flux, moments like this can feel as if time itself is winking at us. For an instant we find ourselves completely immersed in the experience, not bothered about the past or future while simultaneously being aware that the moment itself will not last. In literature this is sometimes called ‘a haiku moment’, a description which captures the poetic beauty of beholding such a delicious sliver of experience.
These kinds of treasures are to be found in the smallest details of daily life, if we can slow down, be present and pay attention long enough to notice. In that single heartbeat before the bird flew away, wabi sabi was present, as I experienced a natural beauty even more exquisite for its imminent vanishing.
The call of beauty
One lady in her seventies told me, ‘I feel wabi sabi when I’m in a space alone but can sense the lingering comforting presence of people who were there until a moment ago.’
Wabi sabi is a gentle gauge of exquisite moments.
It is the anticipation of a loved one’s return, just before the airport’s arrivals doors open. A campfire story sent into the smoky air. The memory of a kiss, while you are still kissing.
When we look back on our lives, these are the kinds of moments that we remember. When we rush too fast, eyes locked somewhere on the future, or staring at our smartphones or distracted by someone else’s path, we miss the opportunity to stop and collect our own moments of beauty, and to sense wabi sabi .
We know how delightful life can be when we are present to it, and yet we still spend our days rushing, distracted, stressed out, boxed in, on track for a life that doesn’t quite feel like ours. When we truly open our eyes and hearts, beauty calls to us, through the chaos and the noise. It shows us a fleeting glimpse of the version of our lives where our soul is singing because we harnessed our talents, gave attention to our ideas, nurtured our love and really showed up for life.
Sometimes we feel this, but turn away from it because it doesn’t look how we expected it to look. It’s not the shiny, polished life we have been taught to desire: the perfect house, job, car, partner, family or whatever. But when we are present and really listen for the call of beauty, we discover the life that was meant for us. Our perfectly imperfect life.
Beauty calls quietly. We have to be perceptive to its signal, and then play our part. The creative urge, the pull to a rural life, the yearning for friendships that go deeper – whatever it is that is calling you to a particular kind of beauty, heed that call, for it is the beauty of life itself.
Live long, live well
According to UNDP, Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world, 1 with 67,824 centenarians alive in 2017. 2 Within Japan, the rural village of Matsukawa in Nagano has the highest life expectancy of anywhere. 3
When this was announced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the mayor of Matsukawa, Akito Hirabayashi, said in an interview:
I was bowled over to hear this news. It’s not that we have done anything special to achieve this. We are blessed with a beautiful natural environment, many people work daily in the fields and we eat food that we have grown ourselves. There is also a strong sense of community, and I am sure all these things have contributed. 4
A friend of mine who visited Matsukawa to cover this for TV said, ‘I saw many local people out walking, exercising together in parks and swimming. They also have a lot of cooking lessons, and there was a general sense of positivity in the town.’ The local government investigated further and found three main reasons for the high life expectancy: a high standard of public health, a high level of health awareness and participation in health-building activities and a meaningful life with high motivation for work and participation in social activities. 5
It’s not just about living long. It’s also about living well. And wabi sabi is a barometer of wellbeing.
Ayumi Nagata, a young shop assistant, told me:
When we are so busy that we no longer sense wabi sabi , we know that we have gone off track. It’s a reminder to slow down, b
reathe and take time to find beauty. When we can’t sense wabi sabi we are distracted, or under pressure, or we aren’t taking care of ourselves.
When we look back on our lives, what do we want to remember? How do we want to feel? What do we want to have contributed? What will have made our life meaningful? How many moments of beauty do we want to have experienced along the way?
And let’s not forget that there is beauty in every emotion. The more we allow ourselves to feel, the closer we get to that ravishing sense of aliveness and awe, even in the midst of challenging experiences.
Remember, one of the most fundamental teachings of wabi sabi is that we are impermanent, just like everyone we love, and everything in the world around us. We will not live for ever. We may not even live a long time. Life is precious, and fleeting. It’s up to us to make the most of it at each stage, starting where we are right now.
Lessons from an elder
I love talking to older people, hearing stories from the past and getting their perspective on today’s world. It was, therefore, a real pleasure to spend an afternoon with Mineyo Kanie, the ninety-four-year-old daughter of the late Gin-san , at her home in Nagoya. Gin-san and her twin sister Kin-san were known for being the world’s oldest identical twins, living to 108 and 107 respectively. Full of fun and vitality, they were frequently featured on television and became national celebrities in Japan. I wanted to know what Kanie-san had learned from her mother and aunt about living a good long life. I was also interested to hear the perspective of someone who, statistically, is very likely to live to a ripe old age herself.
Kneeling on a flat cushion in her tatami-matted lounge, Kanie -san exudes a gentle calm. You get the sense that she has seen it all. When she was born, in this very house, there was nothing but rice fields as far as the eye could see. Now it is a residential neighbourhood in the bustling city of Nagoya.
Over green tea and blueberry sweets, we chat about parenting and politics, society and friendship. We laugh a lot. Her cheeky giggle is infectious. At one point, Kanie -san looks wistfully off into the distance and says, ‘You know, getting old is fine, but it’s sad when hardly any of your friends are left.’
We are meeting just before the annual Hina-Matsuri Girls’ Day celebration, when people traditionally display a set of ornamental dolls dressed as the Emperor and Empress, attendants and musicians in the traditional dress of the Heian period (794–1185). The display in Kanie- san’s lounge instead features two dolls dressed as Kin -san and Gin -san, whose names meant ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ respectively, a gift from a fan many years ago. Occasions like this mark the passage of time, in a similar way to the seasons. It’s a reminder to gather with loved ones, and to celebrate life.
Besides honouring tradition, Kanie -san also puts much store by simple daily rituals, and having a routine to keep her active. She makes her own meals from scratch, always from natural ingredients, often using food she has grown herself. Full of energy, Kanie- san regularly cycles a short way to pay respects at her family’s grave, and tends her garden daily. On a practical note, she uses small plates for her meals, and stops eating before she feels full. In Japan they call this ‘ hara hachi bu’ ( ), putting your chopsticks down when your stomach is 80 per cent full.
Kanie -san tells me, ‘We don’t need much to live a good life. When you are grateful for what you do have, and share it with those you love, whatever else you need comes.’ Her deep appreciation of the gifts of a simple life is wabi sabi personified. She goes on: ‘Don’t waste energy worrying about what you don’t have. That is the route to misery. Instead, pay attention to the good already present in your life, and do your best at whatever you are doing. There is joy in the satisfaction of that.’
Perhaps Kanie -san’s most important advice is this:
‘Stay cheerful. Don’t worry so much about things that don’t really matter.’
Pondering your own longevity
In Chapter 7 , we considered the potential effect on your career of living to one hundred, but what about if you actually have a much shorter life than you expected? Let’s take a second look at different scenarios:
• What difference would it make to your current work, long-term finances and priorities if you knew you were going to live for ten more years? For only one more year?
• What might your end-of-life self think about how you are living right now?
• What advice might your end-of-life self give to your current self?
Imagining different possibilities for the one thing we cannot know – how long we will live – can be an enlightening tool for discovering what really matters to us, and reprioritising accordingly. It can help us to reconsider what is truly urgent in our lives, and reveal how many of the things we thought were urgent, really are not. It can inspire us to make the most of now, and step away from the daily hustle to breathe deeply and soak it all up.
Lessons from the airport
I am at the airport, waiting for a flight to Tōkyō, holding a pot of expensive face cream in each hand. I’m trying to decide between the two, because if I buy one, I’ll get something else for free. And then I realise: it’s happening. I have caught myself in the act of being dazzled by the shiny thing, and lured by the promise of softer skin and fewer wrinkles, while I’m waiting for a flight to Japan to research the concept of beauty in imperfection. As the irony dawns, I laugh out loud, put the pots back on the shelf and save myself forty pounds.
My willingness to spend money on ‘anti-ageing’ cream is an indication of my resistance to the natural ageing process of my own body. And I am not alone. The anti-ageing beauty industry has global sales of close to $300 billion a year. 6 That is one hundred times the global spend on tackling and treating malaria . 7
We are so obsessed with trying to hang on to our youth that we have forgotten to look for our own sabi beauty.
The beauty of ageing
It is a chilly December morning, and I rise early to have breakfast with my old friend Duncan Flett, who has lived in Kyōto for almost twenty years. Duncan is a hugely knowledgeable tour guide, who has his finger on the pulse of the old city. He has recommended we meet at the pop-up Kishin Kitchen, which unbeknown to us, will soon be given the honour of ‘The Best Breakfast in Japan’. 8 The name ‘Kishin’, written , means ‘joyful heart’, and you can tell that every part of our breakfast has been prepared by chefs who truly love their work. During the meal, ably hosted by the talented young Toshinao Iwaki, we are served rice three times. The first helping, carefully placed in a handcrafted ceramic bowl, is offered just after it has finished cooking and is shiny, steaming and sticky. Not long after, once it has been allowed to rest a little, we are offered another serving. And then, towards the end of our breakfast, our bowls are refilled with the okoge – the ‘honourable burnt bits’ from around the edges of the pan.
The rice is delicious at every stage of cooking. There are highlights each time – the freshness of the first helping, the familiarity of the second and the texture of the third. My favourite is actually the okoge, the final stage of the rice, but the chef can only get to the okoge by taking the rice through the earlier stages of cooking first. It gets better with time.
We have a tendency to look at the ageing process as something to be avoided, feared even. But everything about wabi sabi tells us that it is to be embraced – that we bloom and ripen with time; that our character develops and our wisdom deepens as we age; that we have more to offer the world with every experience we go through.
If you think about who you truly admire, it’s likely that you will include someone older than you in your list. And yet we find it hard to see the value of ageing in ourselves. We spend valuable time and money trying to cling to our youth on the surface, while ignoring the beauty and wisdom of age underneath.
Rev. Takafumi Kawakami, Deputy Head Priest of the Shunkō-in Temple in Kyōto, told me:
Wabi sabi reminds us to embrace each life stage, so we can age with grace.
If you
look at the wabi sabi concept, you see an ageing process. This is connected to the Buddhist concept of mujō , impermanence. I was recently on a panel of global-health experts where everyone was discussing how to keep ourselves younger for longer, as if we have forgotten that ageing is part of the natural cycle of life. We fear getting older. We fear dying. We want to hold on to our youth and our own existence for as long as possible. But wabi sabi teaches us to enjoy the ageing process, and to relax into it as the most natural of things. It’s OK to get old. We are supposed to get old. It’s OK to know we are not going to be here for ever because that helps us treasure the time we do have, and find virtue or meaning in our lives.
Wabi sabi encourages us to choose the path of serenity and contentment, by accepting where we are in the natural cycle of our life. Using the tools I have shared in this book, we can turn away from stress and drama, and release the aggressive energy of the hustle to make way for the nourishing energy of the flow.
Transitioning between life stages can be difficult, especially if we don’t acknowledge or accept what is happening to our bodies, minds and emotions. It is often in our times of major transition that things feel harder, more confusing, scary even, but also, it is in those times that we can see tremendous growth and flourishing. Sometimes we wait until something major happens to kick us from one life stage to another, but we don’t have to.
If we are open to the transition, instead of holding on too tight to what has been, we can experience great insights and flow into the next stage, whether or not we feel ready. In this way, wabi sabi can remind us to live mindfully, taking each stage as it comes, growing into our wisdom and taking care of ourselves along the way.
The Japanese use the word ‘fushime ’ ( ), which means ‘the node on a bamboo shoot’, to acknowledge that we grow in stages, and to describe important moments of transition in our lives. These times of transition are often celebrated with ceremonies, and words of thanks to the people who have supported a person through that particular life stage. I think it is a lovely way to recognise that simply making the transition from one life stage to another is something worth celebrating together.