Circle Three: the fifth
Wabi-Sabi. Kobe Bryant. Clams.
Welcome back to Circle Three!
This week find a Big Idea from Kobe Bryant, Circles of Thought about science, clams, and what enough means, and my writing about Wabi-Sabi. Enjoy!
Circle Three is all about connecting: ideas, people, and feelings. Because innovation comes out of new connections. Nobody else has your experiences and insights; they are unique to you. I’m constantly being reminded of the value of my experiences. If you want to dig further into the power of connections, I recommend reading Range. And if you want to pass along Circle Three and make new connections, I’d appreciate it!
Circle Three hopefully adds a few experiences and ideas that you wouldn’t otherwise come across and lets you go make even more connections. If the mood strikes, reply to the newsletter to start a conversation with me and connect.
-Dan
For new readers, the name Circle Three comes from Seth Godin’s Linchpin, where he posits that the internet has created a tribe. Thanks for being a part of this third circle. Let’s create something.
One Big Idea
“We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.” - Kobe Bryant
Self-doubt forces action. I’ve realized it’s important to recognize the doubt that exists, then let it help drive progress and discovery. Gotta take the shot either way.
Circles of Thought
The city of Warsaw, Poland taps into the animal kingdom to monitor water quality. That’s right. They use eight specially acclimatized clams to control the city’s water supply. A great reminder that even with all the technological innovations today, we still rely on the fundamentals of nature.
The pandemic has brought a rise of peripatetic workers, or ‘half-tourists’, who have never had an opportunity to work remotely. Companies and individuals are adapting, as well as countries like Iceland that are laying out the red carpet (but only for the wealthy?).
Each small decision accumulates to form your life. Five minutes a day for one year makes 30 hours on that habit. This is one lesson listed by personal development guru Darius Foroux in 10 Lessons I Learned From Making Many Mistakes in My 20s.
What is enough? Balancing more and enough isn’t easy in the bustle of the day-to-day; more is generally the default option when we can have something at the door in two days or less. Enough, however, is usually less than we think.
Before you click the link, make a guess: how long is the longest grammatically correct sentence consisting of one unique word?
Wabi-Sabi
Learn about the value of the ancient Japanese tradition of embracing imperfection and finding beauty in the way things are.
Think about a spot in your house or apartment that shows a sign of wear. Unless you recently moved, I’d venture to guess there are dozens that come to mind. A scuff. A stain. A constantly dirty entryway. A plate with a chip. A squeaky step or door. The perfectionist thinks of these ‘flaws’ and cringes. But that’s not what this Twitter user did to her house. She embraced her home’s scuffs. You can see she focused on the memories with plaques memorializing those pesky dents in her new home.
This is an in-your-face display of the ancient Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi combines two parts of the ancient Japanese Aesthetic, a set of ideals on the norms of taste and beauty, and stems back to the unpredictability of nature on the island of Japan. These are the two ideas of wabi (the elegant beauty of humble simplicity) and sabi (the passing of time and subsequent deterioration).
Wabi-sabi is an acceptance of the imperfection in life, especially over time. You can see this in a decaying flower or an off-centered ceramic bowl.
Homes, years, and lives may come and go, but what we are left with are the memorable imperfections: the funny phrases, the messy entryway from friends or children, or, like the image, when the safe got away. Wabi-sabi leaves room for this creativity. As a leader or decision-maker, wabi-sabi leaves enough space to run with a new idea and be creative. Good leaders embrace wabi-sabi because they welcome the struggle that comes with solving new problems.
“As things come and go, they show signs of their coming or going, and these signs are considered to be beautiful.” Couldn’t have said it better myself; thanks Wikipedia.
Wabi-sabi can be applied internally as well: accepting yourself and your own imperfections. Accepting how things are instead of how we envision they should be. Professor Tanehisa Otabe, professor at Tokyo University’s Institute of Aesthetics, tells BBC Travel that “wabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination.” We, too, are constant works in progress and creatively design our futures.
We can embrace all the imperfections to fully appreciate the nuances of ourselves and our lives, and think about what in our life deserves its own plaque, a permanent emblem of its imperfection. Wabi-sabi can be viewed as a shift from the state of doing to the state of being; what could be more important around the holidays?
State of the Circle
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