Wabi-Sabi (侘寂) — Learning to Keep What Time Has Touched

 Gemini Generated

For many of us, calendars, diaries, and yearbooks marked the arrival of a new year. The unused one from the year before rarely went to waste — it became a scrapbook of sorts. A place for doodles, secret codes, half-formed thoughts, phone numbers, and ideas that felt important in the moment.

Handwritten notes, smudged ink, messy, uneven lines. Imperfect — but deeply personal.

Over the years, I collected a lot of those and at some point, I decided it was time to clean up my shelves. It felt practical at the time.
Old diaries were discarded, with only scanned copies of selected pages treasured.

I feel sad about that decision now. I didn’t realise then how much of me lived in those pages — they were part of growing up, maturing together. Those clumsy lines on paper were akin to the veins of a tree, irregular in shape yet proof of years of existence.

I wasn’t aware of the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi then, but I felt its essence.

Wabi-Sabi invites us to see beauty in imperfection.
It encourages us to embrace the imperfect, the transient, and the incomplete — a cracked teacup, a worn-out pair of jeans.

It asks us to accept every crack, wrinkle, and stain not as flaws, but as quiet markers of authenticity — like a painter’s strokes on the artwork of being alive.

Suddenly, those old diaries felt dearer, and their absence created a sense of vacuum. Life is a mosaic, a collage formed by both perfect and imperfect everyday moments. Removing traces of imperfection does not make the image perfect; it makes it unauthentic — someone else’s life.

A chipped mug that brews the morning coffee — each chip carrying the memory of a day.
A weathered wooden table — scratched by years of family dinners, marked by countless cups of tea, holding a history no polish should erase.
An old photograph, creased at the edges — imperfectly preserved, yet holding a perfect memory.

While Kaizen teaches us to keep improving, step by step, Wabi-Sabi reminds us not to discard what time has already shaped.

One urges growth; the other, acceptance.
Perhaps a meaningful life needs both —
the courage to improve,
and the wisdom to keep what already bears our marks.

A Friend, a Stapler, and the Meaning of Kaizen (改善)

Image generated by Google Gemini

Kaizen (改善) always reminds me of a dear friend who introduced me to this phrase many years ago. A friend I spent time with back when we were still single—meeting often for tea or an occasional drink, and endlessly sharing anything new we learned. The word also carries a quiet sadness because of his untimely passing, but the idea itself lives on.

One afternoon, he arrived unusually animated. A consultant had visited his office, he said, and they had been introduced to a concept called Kaizen. The word was new to me, and my curiosity was immediately stirred.

He wasn’t a great storyteller, but he could recount the examples he had learned during the training—almost word for word.

What he explained was simple:

We print documents, walk to the printer to collect them, and then move again to find a stapler. If the stapler were placed next to the printer, a few seconds would be saved each time. Those seconds, multiplied across people and days, quietly added up.

It was a very simple, incremental improvement to the process—yet one with a deep and lasting impact.

Kaizen, broken down simply, comes from two words: Kai (change) and Zen (good). Together, they point to continuous improvement—not through dramatic transformations, but through small, thoughtful changes that are easy to sustain.

It asks us to resist the temptation of grand resolutions and instead focus on modest, repeatable steps.

Want to get fit?
Start with five minutes of stretching.

Trying to learn a new skill?
Ten minutes every day works better than two hours once a week—and then stopping.

Progress doesn’t need perfection, because perfection often prevents anything from getting done at all.

What Kaizen taught me, long before I realized it, is that improvement doesn’t have to be loud. It can be quiet, almost invisible, unfolding gently in the background of daily life.

And perhaps that is its greatest strength.

The 54th Post — Closing the Daily Chapter

 

I have been on a writing marathon for the past seven weeks — and today, on 30 November 2025, I’m closing this chapter with the 54th post of my series. It has been a ritual: sometimes demanding, often unexpected, but always real fun.

Over the previous 53 posts, I wrote about many things — curiosity, doubts, discoveries, ideas. I experimented with different styles: sometimes essay-like, sometimes personal, sometimes informative, sometimes conversational, and once I even tried a poem. I wandered between memories and questions, theories and observations, hopes and uncertainties, including a few thoughts on AI.

What I wrote:

Moments of wondering — small questions I had about life, culture, and the things I see and feel around me.

Thoughts on learning, on change, on growing.

Pieces of honesty — moments where I tried to share what I truly thought rather than what I “should” think.

A mix of genres — essays, musings, and snapshots of ideas. I pushed myself not to follow a fixed formula but to trust where my pen (or keyboard) led.

Once I shared an old Tagore song my daughter used to sing as a child, and once I tried my hands at a poem.

Some days the words came easily, like they had been waiting for me. On other days, I had to sit quietly and coax them out one by one.

What I learned — and how I changed:

The first lesson for me is that writing consistently taught me how to think more clearly. Even when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, the act of writing teased out hidden thoughts — ideas that were living inside me without my awareness.

I learned that motivation does not need external stimuli — I wrote whether or not anyone was reading, reacting, or appreciating the effort.

A big lesson was that you don’t need to write anything negative, hateful, or hurtful to keep going — even though social media often allows exactly that to thrive.

I also learned that discipline beats inspiration. Not every day was inspiring; some days I wrote simply because I promised myself I would. And often those pieces surprised me — with clarity, with emotion, with something I didn’t expect at the start.

And along the way, I connected with many like-minded bloggers — people I would never have met otherwise — you being one of them.

What this marathon means — and what are the take aways:

This series was a commitment: a way to prove to myself that I could keep going. A way to give shape to my inner questions, to trust my own voice, and to build a habit of creation and exploration.

If you read even one post and felt a spark — a thought, a question, a moment of recognition — then this marathon was worth it. And if you’re reading this now and thinking, “Maybe I could try that too,” then take this as a quiet invitation: start. Write something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It may feel confusing. It may matter only to you. But keep going.

To you, dear reader — known or unknown — thank you for being here. I'm not going away; I’m simply closing this daily ritual. Keep thinking, keep questioning, keep writing your own story.

— End of the daily series, not the writing.