Wabi Sabi's Christmas Hamper
Some stories, thoughts, metaphors and open questions to stick under your tree. My treat.
Hey all. I’m working on a few looooong posts at the moment that I’m going to have to break up into series, but in the meantime I thought I’d try something different for my first Christmas post. I’ve put together a few stray thoughts, analogies, stories and quasi-poems that have come to me over the last few months, and made them up into a seasonal hamper for your delectation. Hope at least one of them strikes a chord.
Merry Christmas.
‘I think of self-improvement as spending your life painting a picture of the ideal you. Every day you add a bit more to the painting. If you’re lucky you finish it before you die.’
‘I think of it more like sculpting.’
Bill and Sarah both grew up middle-class and left college with roughly the same advantages in life.
Bill joined a law firm, worked hard all his life, steadily built up a reputation. He gave 10% of his earnings away every year, and sometimes when he was feeling particularly generous — Christmas, Lent — he’d donate some extra funds to whatever relief effort caught his attention. He died surrounded by his loving family.
Sarah worked a series of office jobs. When she turned 30 she gave everything — all her earnings, savings, possessions — away. She spent the rest of her life travelling around, learning what she could about the ultimate purpose of life, going on retreats, spending time communing with God in the forest, helping the unfortunate people she met in whatever way she could. She died alone.
Ultimately Bill donated far more money, helped far more people and left far more of a legacy to future generations in his children and grandchildren.
Who lived the better life? Why?
When you’re on a Skype or Zoom call your job is to look alright, have a decent Internet connection and set your mic volume to a reasonable level. Everything else to do with how the other person perceives you depends on the quality of their computer screen, their volume and brightness settings, their own Internet connection, whether they’re wearing headphones or not, how good the headphones are.
It’s nothing to do with you and it’s not your responsibility.
Other people’s thoughts and feelings are like their computers.
Every piece of advice comes from a personality type and is directed to a personality type. Some people have too little confidence, others have too much; some people are too cautious, others are too reckless. So for every wise saying there’s another equally wise saying that contradicts it.
Some pieces of advice will resonate with your gut, raise your energy, gently show you where you’re going wrong and encourage you about where you’re going right. And others will make you anxious and throw you into self-doubting spins. Only pay attention to the first type.
The reason ‘time will tell’ and ‘read between the lines’ became clichés is because they were good enough to repeat. The first time someone said them, they were startlingly original and creative ways of describing experience.
Similarly, a lot of cheesy motivational quotes are incredibly radical at heart, and would completely change our lives if we took them seriously enough. The people who mock bon mots like ‘This is just a chapter, not your whole story’, ‘You only fail when you stop trying’ and ‘If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re too small’ the hardest are often the people who need to hear them the most.
When we use physical metaphors to express spiritual realities it’s easy to forget that we’re making the realities less concrete, not more. The spiritual world is more solid than the physical one.
People either want to be in awe or they want mastery.
They’re either excited by the unknown or frightened of it. They either enjoy solving a mystery or enjoy having solved a mystery. They’re either stimulated by ambiguity or annoyed by it. They either want to explore and get lost, or explore and draw a map. They set out to learn or to colonise. They want to go with the flow or set up a system of dams and weirs. They either want to learn from others or teach them, submit to them or dominate them.
One person pretends power dynamics don’t exist. Another comes along and spots an easy mark.
People accept that fame generally takes a lot of hard work, a lot of talent and a lot of luck. They accept that you have to have the right personality for it, that some interests set you up for it more than others and that you generally don’t get it unless you’re actively dedicating your life to it. And they accept that it has pluses and minuses.
Why don’t they do the same for wealth?
The way a joke is phrased and the context in which it’s said are usually more important than the subject matter. There’s a huge difference between using humour to relieve tension around what you know is a serious issue and making light of something because you genuinely think it’s not a big deal.
If people on both sides of the “How far is too far?” comedy wars agreed on this distinction, a lot of the debates wouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
Good traditional art reminds individuals of everything that makes their society special.
Bad traditional art may serve the community, but it has nothing to say to individuals.
Good modern art invites individuals to broaden their horizons past what tradition and community have to offer.
Bad modern art is propaganda designed to recruit individuals to communities organised around a Cause.
Enlightenment takes many forms depending on people’s personalities and the imbalances they need to correct. If you spend all your time thinking about mundane matters, it may consist of opening yourself up to the other world. If you spend all your time in the other world, it may consist of reconciling yourself to the mundane.
Isn’t it a tragedy when the old world falls and nothing’s there to take its place?
When old customs and ways of life lose their credibility but it’s impossible to create new ones? When old belief systems are intolerant and insensitive but new ones are bland and uninspiring? When the old rituals have lost their meaning but the new ones are arbitrary? When the old communities have outlived their use but the new ones don’t fill the gap? When the old emotional registers sound quaint but the new ones are too ironic to feel satisfying? When the old sayings sound pompous but the new ones lack flavour? When the old philosophies overreach but the new ones are too cautious to say anything at all? When the old stories are hackneyed but there aren’t any new stories to tell? When old music sounds dated but new music sounds bad? When artists obsess over breaking new ground but there isn’t any ground left to break? When everybody wants to be original but no-one knows how to go about it?
When you’re standing in the ruins of Pompeii and you don’t even know how to start rebuilding?
Having said all that —
If there’s anything I really want to say to you this Christmas, it’s that you have something to say.