The Beautiful Ugly

Until you learn to love the flawed and broken, lasting happiness will always be out of reach

Hello, Friends & Neighbors!

I had a good laugh at myself earlier this week. I was listening to Thelonious Monk while writing some science fiction haiku as I put the final touches on a book I first meant to publish three years ago. It hit me that I was the living stereotype of what my in-laws gossip about me.

I mean, what kind of waste of time is it to write science fiction haiku?

The truth is that when I first started writing haiku as a creative practice back in 2016, I could never have imagined how much it would take over my life.

The fact that so many of you are here to read my essays and enjoy my crude haiku comics makes me so happy.

Today’s post goes into more depth about my philosophy of haiku and why this is such an essential part of my life.

The Beautiful Ugly

I grew up in a high-demand religion that preached perfection was a requirement for salvation and the only way to achieve eternal happiness. Long after having left that faith, I still carry the emotional scars from spending years sprinting after happiness, only to always stumble because of my very human weaknesses.

I thought happiness—true happiness—wasn't for me because I wasn’t perfect. I was only worthy of a small piece of joy commensurate with my vast distance from the standard of godlike perfection.

While I was taught that my faith made me special, one of the elect of the Earth, the truth is that the faith of my youth was just an amplified version of the American narcissistic obsession with youth, beauty, and perfection.

Research shows that we have a beauty bias, giving favorable treatment to conventionally attractive people throughout society, from the workplace to cancer treatment.

We want to be beautiful, and we see a certain configuration of physical traits as perfection.

Most of us fall short of both these grueling physical beauty standards and every other measure of perfection. This is why study after study shows us that we are lonelier and more unhappy than ever before. This is despite living in a time where there has never been greater wealth or better access to luxury.

You even see this obsession for beauty in social media algorithms. Lost in all the drama over the recent TikTok ban in the United States is the news that the TikTok algorithm suppressed views of people it viewed as unattractive and boosted people who were attractive.

It’s no wonder so many teens and adults are miserable. The very apps we use to relax and escape are reinforcing an impossible standard of perfection.

This goes far beyond just physical beauty. We have built a society that worships wealth at all costs and stigmatizes anyone daring to live life outside of the accepted norms.

But there is another way to live.

You don’t have to accept the standards of beauty and perfection that Western culture pushes.

One alternative is to choose to live a wabi-sabi life.

Wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a Japanese concept rooted in both Shintoism and Zen Buddhism. It’s sometimes translated as less-is-more. But that doesn’t fully explain this powerful philosophy.

Wabi-sabi is choosing to see beauty in the ugly and imperfect. It’s about witnessing and accepting the fleeting nature of everything, including our existence.

You see the element of wabi-sabi in everything from Japanese art and architecture to the famous Japanese tea ceremony and haiku poetry.

In the tea ceremony, a teacup that has been repaired, one that has had its cracks sealed with a different color, is more beautiful and desirable than a new “perfect” cup.

Wabi-sabi helps us to see that there is no such thing as perfection.

A desire for perfection stops us from growing. When my children started to learn how to play piano, they all got frustrated that it was hard. We started each child in piano lessons when they were in kindergarten. Each of them easily excelled in school but found being competent at the piano difficult.

They had to learn that before they could be good at most things, they had to be willing to be bad. This might have been the most important lesson they ever learned. The desire to be perfect at playing the piano at first stopped them from enjoying it and from getting better.

While none of our children still take piano lessons, they all still play musical instruments for the sheer joy of it. Seeking perfection stops art. It keeps you from growing. It stops you from becoming competent and makes happiness and contentment impossible.

Once you learn to see the world in a wabi-sabi way, you start to understand that beauty is not rare or uniform. Instead, there is a unique beauty to everything. The more you notice this beauty, the more time you spend in wonder, the more content you are with the present moment.

The happier you become — not in the sense of toxic positivity — you don’t ignore your feelings. Seeing the world as full of fleeting beauty and unconventional magnificence empowers to you fully feel each emotion and then to let it go.

You stop chasing happiness and allow happiness to find you.

How do you access this different way of seeing the world? How do you live a wabi-sabi life?

I’m not a monk or a philosopher. Instead, I am a poet. I have learned to begin living the wabi-sabi life through daily walks around town and in nature, writing haiku about what I see, and then illustrating some of those poems.

If you are willing to open your eyes and ears, you will find the beautifully ugly in everything.

A magical transformation occurs once you begin to consciously look for the beautifully imperfect out in the world. Without meaning to, you start to see it in yourself.

Many of us tell ourselves stories about how self-aware we are when we are only aware of our faults and weaknesses. This is not self-awareness, this is a form of emotional masochism.

True self-awareness means seeing the beauty in your flaws, understanding the ways you excel, and accepting both without judgment. The paradox is that this kind of self-awareness cannot come from obsessing over your thoughts. It can only become when you become detached from yourself and see yourself as part of the fabric of the universe.

Adopting a wabi-sabi mindset means being open to mindfulness practices. You don’t have to be a Buddhist monk or ace transcendental meditation. All you have to do is observe the world around you as it truly is.

This is why I write poetry. It’s a creative practice that keeps me in the moment. Concentrating on what I observe and working to condense that observation into seventeen syllables helps me stop the useless anxiety over the unknowable future and the unchangeable past and enjoy this one moment.

The elements of wabi-sabi are everywhere once you know what you’re searching for. Mary Oliver’s masterpiece Wild Geese, is one of my favorite examples. This poem starts:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

You have something wonderful inside of you. Some essay, novel, musical composition, visual art, knitted sweater, or other art or craft is waiting to explode out of you. It will not be perfect. But it will be yours, beautifully ugly.

Like the lonely whale, your unique song has the power to touch others. When you obsess over beauty or perfection of any kind, you deny yourself and the world your gifts.

Ultimately, perfection is about ego and wabi-sabi is about releasing ego’s grip on your soul so that you can soar.

The surest way to find wabi-sabi is to cultivate some meaningful, personal creative practice. Haiku poetry is one simple and accessible path, but any art or craft will do. You do not need to consider yourself a writer or artist to have a creative practice.

To quote Mary Oliver again, “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

If you want to increase your personal satisfaction, if you want to help the rest of the world be happier and more beautiful, find the wabi-sabi life inside of you.

Celebrate the imperfect, beautiful ugly.

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Be the poetry you want to see in the world!

Cheers,