Wabi-Sabi
WABI-SABI
/wah-bee-sah-bee/
noun
the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection
I wanted the perfect life.
I wanted all the perfect things: the fairy tale love story, the beautiful house, the nuclear family. But I’ve had to let go of the hope and expectation that my life would turn out perfectly. It hasn’t been easy. I fought hard for the life I always envisioned. And now, it seems it wasn’t meant to be, for me.
Perfection is an illusion, anyway. It’s funny that I thought I could control so many aspects of my life, including the whole perfect part. I placed importance on the image I conveyed to the world. What’s worse is that I let that expected image influence decisions I made or didn’t make for my life – my one and only life. I started down the road-most-traveled, but the path I ended up on was far from where I began; and far from the road I had so diligently planned for. It was more like “the road-few-travel.”
I have been searching for the same thing all along, but I packed for one trip and ended up on a different one. I got on a plane headed to the all-American dream and realized that our plane crashed in the Netherlands. The kids and I were disappointed at first, because well, everyone dreams of baseball, apple pie and a white picket fence. But after realizing we had all survived the crash, it became clear that although our final destination was different, it was indeed beautiful – and liberal, open-minded, accepting and a little wild at times. In fact, there’s a lot about our new reality that is even more awesome than before. We are not without our bruises from a turbulent flight, but now that we’ve landed, all is well.
Divorce has been a trip, that’s for sure. You don’t arrive at your final destination without some major growth and reflection. I’ve learned some valuable lessons in the last five years or so. Most importantly, I learned introspection, which has been incredibly eye opening. Introspection opened the door for so many other lessons.
When I was married, I thought I was pretty much perfect. My marriage reinforced that idea. I believed that if I was sweet and kind, I was perfect. He was the only imperfect one. But there’s nothing like divorce to bring a person to their knees with rejection, isolation and humility. Humility is the gift you receive when you finally realize you were never perfect – not even close.
Humility is hard, but it isn’t all bad. There is an incredible amount of freedom in letting it all go: the perfection, the control, the image. I am learning to just be me with all of my imperfections. I wish I could say that I orchestrated my personal growth. Instead, it has been forced upon me by the divorce and all the bullshit I’ve been through. That damn humility has a way of putting you in your place and reminding you that you are no more important than anyone else in this world – no matter how hard you think you have it.
I have faced all of the hard stuff that divorce threw my way. I came out slightly battered, but mostly I came out tough as shit. It’s my kids I worry about. I know they will carry the scars of the divorce with them for the rest of their lives. I know I have altered their future – I just hope I haven’t completely fucked it up. I hope I have taught them to be resilient, empathetic, optimistic and grateful in the face of hardship. I hope they feel the everlasting, overwhelming, belly-aching love I have for them. And I hope they believe they are perfect and their lives are perfect, just the way they are.
I was about to write, “in a perfect world, things would have gone differently.” But that’s not what I want to say. My world is perfect the way it is. It is the way it should be. And I made the best decisions I could, every step of the way. Unfortunately, there is a societal view of how these things should go. There are unwritten relationship rules that people expect you to follow; stay married, and if you decide to leave, it should not be for someone else, ever. But this is my world, which is not perfect, and I did what I had to do.
The word “perfect” has a new meaning for me now. It means accepting life for all it has to offer and to teach us. It means accepting my past and my journey as one with many stops and many turns. Although I am doing the best I can, I can’t guarantee I won’t crash our plane a few more times along the way. But if we crash, we will put our lives back together – even if it’s in slight disarray. All of the hard stuff that has shaped us, will continue to shape us. It has made us perfect; we are perfectly messed up, perfectly tough, perfectly loving and perfectly loved.
Turns out that I have the perfect life after all.
The Japanese term “wabi-sabi” has always had a special meaning to my kids and me. It means finding beauty in imperfection. So, I say to my beautifully imperfect travel mates, “wabi-sabi, my Loves.”