An Ancient Approach to Perfectionism.

I've been fighting my perfectionism since I was old enough to understand its meaning. If you, too, are a perfectionist, you've got my empathy. It's not an easy thing to do.

The Japanese have a highly refined aesthetic. They are a perfectionistic people. Yet Japan is where the contrarian concept of wabi-sabi orginated.

Wabi-sabi honors the imperfect, the unfinished, the transient.

If a rose drops a brown petal and you don't brush it away, that's wabi-sabi. Setting a table with a chipped dish is wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is a crooked nose on a beautiful face. Wabi-sabi is a beat-up wooden table with rings and cracks from years of use.

Wabi-sabi is interesting because it allows us to appreciate the incomplete, the impermanent. Wabi-sabi celebrates asymmetry and deteroiration.

And wabi-sabi has been very effective at helping me recognize--and lighten up--on the soul-crushing perfectionism in myself and others.

Awareness of wabi-sabi softens the edges of perfectionism.