It’s a Wabi-Sabi Life

 

by Linda Rodriguez

When I was a child, I learned a number of traditional Cherokee ways of looking at life from my grandmother. It has not always been easy to live in accordance with all of those beliefs, ingrained in my heart though they are, as I have made my way through modern American society and built a career, first as an academic and then as a writer.

 

The older I get, the more I fall back on those traditional ways of looking at life, however. Right now, we are moving into a new house in a new city in a new state for a new job for my husband. I have decided that this is the time to change my life and make it more authentic and integrated and creative. At night, after my day’s work and all of the extra work of moving and settling in, I have been doing some reading before bed. Oddly enough, I have encountered two philosophies of life which echo and resonate with the traditional perspectives of my ancestors. And even more oddly, those two philosophies of life have come from a Japanese writer and aesthetic philosopher and America’s first Black, nationally competitive tennis champion.

 

Osami Nishimura is the author of Wabi Sabi: The Art of Imperfection: Discover the traditional Japanese Aesthetics and Learn How to Enjoy the Beauty of Imperfection and Live a Wabi Sabi Lifestyle. Wabi Sabi is a way of living and looking at the world and creating that grew out of the great Japanese tradition of the tea ceremony, cha-no-yu. It is one of the two Japanese art traditions (along with boro) that led to the Western art form of the crazy quilt. Wabi Sabi does not have a direct translation. In traditional Japanese life and aesthetics, however, it could be described as preferring a life of simplicity, modesty, and appreciation, of finding beauty in that which is imperfect or marred. According to Nishimura, “Wabi-sabi nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

 

Arthur Ashe was the first Black tennis player selected to the United States Davis Cup team, and the only Black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open and to be ranked number one in the world (in 1975). He retired in 1980. After acquiring HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion for surgery, he became an outspoken advocate for AIDS research and patient care and established a foundation for those purposes. It was during his activism for civil rights and for AIDS research and the removal of stereotypes and bias against AIDS patients that he said, “We want to be able to look back and say to all concerned that we did what we had to do, when we had to do it, and with all the resources required.” When a heckler called out that there wasn’t enough money and expertise for what he was asking, he famously said, “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

 

I could hear Ashe’s words in my grandmother’s voice; they were so much like something she might well have said to me in my childhood. And Nishimura’s description of Wabi-sabi resonates heavily with the core value of “balance” within Cherokee spirituality. Unlike the settler culture which dominates America today and demands that we all seek perfection and to become winners, my ancestral teachings were that we seek balance and harmony within ourselves, within our relationships, and within our world, that Creation is harmed by our neglect of balance and harmony, and we must work to right this imbalance in the world.

 

If you ask this old crazy quilter and upcycled-fabric-collage artist, Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect and Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can both fit right in with that traditional perspective on how to live. As a writer, though, it becomes hard to opt out of that American value of seeking perfection and the win, but I’m trying to bring that part of my creative self in line with the other half of me. It isn’t easy, by a long shot, because our teachers, our mentors, and we ourselves have told our writer selves that we must seek excellence and perfection and win the agent, the publisher, the bestseller list, and the awards. Still, I feel confident that I can do it. I’ll just follow the words of a wise man who said, “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can,” remembering that “nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

 

 

 Linda Rodriguez's Skeet Bannion mystery novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and books of poetry—Skin Hunger, Heart's Migration, Dark Sister—received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Eric Hoffer Poetry Prize and Oklahoma Book Award finalists, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. She also published Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop.  Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, was optioned for film.

Her 13^th book, Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging, was published by University of Nebraska Press in May 2023. She also edited Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriqueña Poets Look at Their American Lives, The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East, The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology, Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology, and other anthologies.

Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com or follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rodriguez_linda  or on Threads at https://threads.com/lindarodriguezwrites.