Growing up in a Japanese household, I'm realize this philosophy has been engrained in me.
"Wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty and it occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West."[1] "if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi."[2] "[Wabi-sabi] nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."[3]
also reading the following has expanded the meanings and potentials of wabi-sabi in my design studies.
Elaine Scarry, the Walter M. Cabot professor of aesthetics and the general theory of value at Harvard University, has just published a rather wonderful, slim little book, “On Beauty and Being Just.” Its twin premises may seem curious. First, she defends beauty against charges that it is politically incorrect. She then argues that (as the book’s flap copy puts it) beauty can “press us toward a greater concern for justice.
