N ight has fallen, and I am running a little late. Clutching a bottle of wine I can’t really afford, I stare wide-eyed at the shrine gate ahead of me. I am actually here. Pinching myself, I pass through the gate, and turn left to the rambling, old house, known by the shrine name Tenmangū. The low hum of excited chatter floats through the air, mingling with the gentle croaking of a hundred frogs. I think about the gathered guests and almost turn to leave. At nineteen, I am intimidated by the prospect of a room full of Japan scholars, linguists, art dealers and other people with far more knowledge on just about everything than me. And I don’t know a soul.

But then I remember what brought me here. How Lost Japan, a wonderful book written by the owner of this house, encouraged me through my high-school exams, promising mystery and adventure, if only I could get into university. How every time I struggled to write another essay, I picked up the book, read a couple of pages and was inspired to do one more hour.

On arrival in Kyōto, I sent a note to thank the author, Alex Kerr, long-time Japan resident and now one of the country’s most famous cultural observers. To my surprise, I received a letter back from his assistant, inviting me to this party at his home, one of the enchanting places I read about in Lost Japan.

The house, and the company, do not disappoint. I spend most of the evening observing fascinating conversations about East Asian history, politics, antiques and all sorts of other things I feel unqualified to talk about. But just being here, in this centuries-old house, in among it all, is enough. At one point we are invited into the old doma, or kitchen area, now used for a writing studio. Open to the rafters, somehow everything in this space seems magnified. A giant sheet of mulberry paper has been spread out on the long table and, huge brush in hand, Alex Kerr is doing some of the most beautiful calligraphy I have ever seen.

Time slows. Voices soften. People seem to be frozen in position, smiles on their faces, candlelight throwing shadows across the room. I think, This moment is special. Tuck it inside your pocket of treasures for safekeeping .

A couple of decades on, many details of that day are blurry, but that moment, which I chose to keep as a precious treasure, remains as clear as if it were yesterday.

I’ll let you into a secret. ‘Perfect’ is actually one my favourite words. I use it all the time, but only ever in the context of moments. I believe that is the only occasion perfection is real. The tiniest slice of time can hover, shimmering in momentary stillness. And then it is gone. A perfect moment in an imperfect world.

That moment in Alex Kerr’s studio at Tenmangū was perfect. The moment I sat in my hospital bed looking out over the sea, holding my precious newborn baby to my chest as the sun rose, knowing that this second child would be my last, was perfect. The moment this morning when I exchanged an unspoken word with a sparrow looking in on me at my writing desk, was perfect.

In a world constantly in flux, moments like this can feel as if time itself is winking at us. For an instant we find ourselves completely immersed in the experience, not bothered about the past or future while simultaneously being aware that the moment itself will not last. In literature this is sometimes called ‘a haiku moment’, a description which captures the poetic beauty of beholding such a delicious sliver of experience.

These kinds of treasures are to be found in the smallest details of daily life, if we can slow down, be present and pay attention long enough to notice. In that single heartbeat before the bird flew away, wabi sabi was present, as I experienced a natural beauty even more exquisite for its imminent vanishing.

One lady in her seventies told me, ‘I feel wabi sabi when I’m in a space alone but can sense the lingering comforting presence of people who were there until a moment ago.’

It is the anticipation of a loved one’s return, just before the airport’s arrivals doors open. A campfire story sent into the smoky air. The memory of a kiss, while you are still kissing.

When we look back on our lives, these are the kinds of moments that we remember. When we rush too fast, eyes locked somewhere on the future, or staring at our smartphones or distracted by someone else’s path, we miss the opportunity to stop and collect our own moments of beauty, and to sense wabi sabi .

We know how delightful life can be when we are present to it, and yet we still spend our days rushing, distracted, stressed out, boxed in, on track for a life that doesn’t quite feel like ours. When we truly open our eyes and hearts, beauty calls to us, through the chaos and the noise. It shows us a fleeting glimpse of the version of our lives where our soul is singing because we harnessed our talents, gave attention to our ideas, nurtured our love and really showed up for life.

Sometimes we feel this, but turn away from it because it doesn’t look how we expected it to look. It’s not the shiny, polished life we have been taught to desire: the perfect house, job, car, partner, family or whatever. But when we are present and really listen for the call of beauty, we discover the life that was meant for us. Our perfectly imperfect life.

Beauty calls quietly. We have to be perceptive to its signal, and then play our part. The creative urge, the pull to a rural life, the yearning for friendships that go deeper – whatever it is that is calling you to a particular kind of beauty, heed that call, for it is the beauty of life itself.

According to UNDP, Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world,¹ with 67,824 centenarians alive in 2017.² Within Japan, the rural village of Matsukawa in Nagano has the highest life expectancy of anywhere.³

When this was announced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the mayor of Matsukawa, Akito Hirabayashi, said in an interview:

I was bowled over to hear this news. It’s not that we have done anything special to achieve this. We are blessed with a beautiful natural environment, many people work daily in the fields and we eat food that we have grown ourselves. There is also a strong sense of community, and I am sure all these things have contributed.⁴

A friend of mine who visited Matsukawa to cover this for TV said, ‘I saw many local people out walking, exercising together in parks and swimming. They also have a lot of cooking lessons, and there was a general sense of positivity in the town.’ The local government investigated further and found three main reasons for the high life expectancy: a high standard of public health, a high level of health awareness and participation in health-building activities and a meaningful life with high motivation for work and participation in social activities.⁵

It’s not just about living long. It’s also about living well. And wabi sabi is a barometer of wellbeing.

When we are so busy that we no longer sense wabi sabi , we know that we have gone off track. It’s a reminder to slow down, breathe and take time to find beauty. When we can’t sense wabi sabi we are distracted, or under pressure, or we aren’t taking care of ourselves.

When we look back on our lives, what do we want to remember? How do we want to feel? What do we want to have contributed? What will have made our life meaningful? How many moments of beauty do we want to have experienced along the way?

And let’s not forget that there is beauty in every emotion. The more we allow ourselves to feel, the closer we get to that ravishing sense of aliveness and awe, even in the midst of challenging experiences.

Remember, one of the most fundamental teachings of wabi sabi is that we are impermanent, just like everyone we love, and everything in the world around us. We will not live for ever. We may not even live a long time. Life is precious, and fleeting. It’s up to us to make the most of it at each stage, starting where we are right now.

I love talking to older people, hearing stories from the past and getting their perspective on today’s world. It was, therefore, a real pleasure to spend an afternoon with Mineyo Kanie, the ninety-four-year-old daughter of the late Gin-san , at her home in Nagoya. Gin-san and her twin sister Kin-san were known for being the world’s oldest identical twins, living to 108 and 107 respectively. Full of fun and vitality, they were frequently featured on television and became national celebrities in Japan. I wanted to know what Kanie-san had learned from her mother and aunt about living a good long life. I was also interested to hear the perspective of someone who, statistically, is very likely to live to a ripe old age herself.

Kneeling on a flat cushion in her tatami-matted lounge, Kanie -san exudes a gentle calm. You get the sense that she has seen it all. When she was born, in this very house, there was nothing but rice fields as far as the eye could see. Now it is a residential neighbourhood in the bustling city of Nagoya.

Over green tea and blueberry sweets, we chat about parenting and politics, society and friendship. We laugh a lot. Her cheeky giggle is infectious. At one point, Kanie -san looks wistfully off into the distance and says, ‘You know, getting old is fine, but it’s sad when hardly any of your friends are left.’

We are meeting just before the annual Hina-Matsuri Girls’ Day celebration, when people traditionally display a set of ornamental dolls dressed as the Emperor and Empress, attendants and musicians in the traditional dress of the Heian period (794–1185). The display in Kanie- san’s lounge instead features two dolls dressed as Kin -san and Gin -san, whose names meant ‘gold’ and ‘silver’ respectively, a gift from a fan many years ago. Occasions like this mark the passage of time, in a similar way to the seasons. It’s a reminder to gather with loved ones, and to celebrate life.

Besides honouring tradition, Kanie -san also puts much store by simple daily rituals, and having a routine to keep her active. She makes her own meals from scratch, always from natural ingredients, often using food she has grown herself. Full of energy, Kanie- san regularly cycles a short way to pay respects at her family’s grave, and tends her garden daily. On a practical note, she uses small plates for her meals, and stops eating before she feels full. In Japan they call this ‘ hara hachi bu’ ( ), putting your chopsticks down when your stomach is 80 per cent full.

Kanie -san tells me, ‘We don’t need much to live a good life. When you are grateful for what you do have, and share it with those you love, whatever else you need comes.’ Her deep appreciation of the gifts of a simple life is wabi sabi personified. She goes on: ‘Don’t waste energy worrying about what you don’t have. That is the route to misery. Instead, pay attention to the good already present in your life, and do your best at whatever you are doing. There is joy in the satisfaction of that.’

‘Stay cheerful. Don’t worry so much about things that don’t really matter.’

In Chapter 7 , we considered the potential effect on your career of living to one hundred, but what about if you actually have a much shorter life than you expected? Let’s take a second look at different scenarios:

• What difference would it make to your current work, long-term finances and priorities if you knew you were going to live for ten more years? For only one more year?

Imagining different possibilities for the one thing we cannot know – how long we will live – can be an enlightening tool for discovering what really matters to us, and reprioritising accordingly. It can help us to reconsider what is truly urgent in our lives, and reveal how many of the things we thought were urgent, really are not. It can inspire us to make the most of now, and step away from the daily hustle to breathe deeply and soak it all up.

I am at the airport, waiting for a flight to Tōkyō, holding a pot of expensive face cream in each hand. I’m trying to decide between the two, because if I buy one, I’ll get something else for free. And then I realise: it’s happening. I have caught myself in the act of being dazzled by the shiny thing, and lured by the promise of softer skin and fewer wrinkles, while I’m waiting for a flight to Japan to research the concept of beauty in imperfection. As the irony dawns, I laugh out loud, put the pots back on the shelf and save myself forty pounds.

My willingness to spend money on ‘anti-ageing’ cream is an indication of my resistance to the natural ageing process of my own body. And I am not alone. The anti-ageing beauty industry has global sales of close to $300 billion a year. ⁶ That is one hundred times the global spend on tackling and treating malaria .⁷

We are so obsessed with trying to hang on to our youth that we have forgotten to look for our own sabi beauty.

It is a chilly December morning, and I rise early to have breakfast with my old friend Duncan Flett, who has lived in Kyōto for almost twenty years. Duncan is a hugely knowledgeable tour guide, who has his finger on the pulse of the old city. He has recommended we meet at the pop-up Kishin Kitchen, which unbeknown to us, will soon be given the honour of ‘The Best Breakfast in Japan’. ⁸ The name ‘Kishin’, written

, means ‘joyful heart’, and you can tell that every part of our breakfast has been prepared by chefs who truly love their work. During the meal, ably hosted by the talented young Toshinao Iwaki, we are served rice three times. The first helping, carefully placed in a handcrafted ceramic bowl, is offered just after it has finished cooking and is shiny, steaming and sticky. Not long after, once it has been allowed to rest a little, we are offered another serving. And then, towards the end of our breakfast, our bowls are refilled with the okoge – the ‘honourable burnt bits’ from around the edges of the pan.

The rice is delicious at every stage of cooking. There are highlights each time – the freshness of the first helping, the familiarity of the second and the texture of the third. My favourite is actually the okoge, the final stage of the rice, but the chef can only get to the okoge by taking the rice through the earlier stages of cooking first. It gets better with time.

We have a tendency to look at the ageing process as something to be avoided, feared even. But everything about wabi sabi tells us that it is to be embraced – that we bloom and ripen with time; that our character develops and our wisdom deepens as we age; that we have more to offer the world with every experience we go through.

If you think about who you truly admire, it’s likely that you will include someone older than you in your list. And yet we find it hard to see the value of ageing in ourselves. We spend valuable time and money trying to cling to our youth on the surface, while ignoring the beauty and wisdom of age underneath.

Rev. Takafumi Kawakami, Deputy Head Priest of the Shunkō-in Temple in Kyōto, told me:

If you look at the wabi sabi concept, you see an ageing process. This is connected to the Buddhist concept of mujō , impermanence. I was recently on a panel of global-health experts where everyone was discussing how to keep ourselves younger for longer, as if we have forgotten that ageing is part of the natural cycle of life. We fear getting older. We fear dying. We want to hold on to our youth and our own existence for as long as possible. But wabi sabi teaches us to enjoy the ageing process, and to relax into it as the most natural of things. It’s OK to get old. We are supposed to get old. It’s OK to know we are not going to be here for ever because that helps us treasure the time we do have, and find virtue or meaning in our lives.

Wabi sabi encourages us to choose the path of serenity and contentment, by accepting where we are in the natural cycle of our life. Using the tools I have shared in this book, we can turn away from stress and drama, and release the aggressive energy of the hustle to make way for the nourishing energy of the flow.

Transitioning between life stages can be difficult, especially if we don’t acknowledge or accept what is happening to our bodies, minds and emotions. It is often in our times of major transition that things feel harder, more confusing, scary even, but also, it is in those times that we can see tremendous growth and flourishing. Sometimes we wait until something major happens to kick us from one life stage to another, but we don’t have to.

If we are open to the transition, instead of holding on too tight to what has been, we can experience great insights and flow into the next stage, whether or not we feel ready. In this way, wabi sabi can remind us to live mindfully, taking each stage as it comes, growing into our wisdom and taking care of ourselves along the way.

The Japanese use the word ‘fushime ’ (

), which means ‘the node on a bamboo shoot’, to acknowledge that we grow in stages, and to describe important moments of transition in our lives. These times of transition are often celebrated with ceremonies, and words of thanks to the people who have supported a person through that particular life stage. I think it is a lovely way to recognise that simply making the transition from one life stage to another is something worth celebrating together.

When we opt to live at a pace that suits us, doing the best we can and accepting that is all we need to do, everything feels different. Each stage of life is a time for growth. We are always learning and changing, whether we actively participate in that or not. At any time, whether things are flowing or tough, we can ask ourselves questions such as:

This brings our attention back into the experience of our lives as they are happening, and helps us to ease ourselves into the next stage. And when we fully embrace life, at whatever age, that’s when our inner beauty shines through.

Without exception, all the older people I spoke to in researching this book talked about the importance of finding beauty in everyday life. We can do this simply by slowing down and looking for things to appreciate: watering flowers, baking cakes, watching the sunset, counting the stars, reading a poem, taking a walk, making something. Even chores can be a meditation if we choose to make them so.

We can create rituals to bring us into the present. Before I sit down to write, I boil the kettle for tea, and ponder the Hamlet quote on my favourite mug: ‘To thine own self be true.’ This is my writing ritual. It reminds me that I am investing time in something that I care about. And it makes the tea taste better.

We can also be open to the unexpected. My memories of travels in Japan are punctuated with the kindness of strangers: the day I went cycling through the fields of Okayama and an old woman stopped me to offer a freshly harvested watermelon, so big it would only just fit in my basket; the government official who arranged my forest bathing session, and gave up his Saturday morning to chauffeur me to the woods; the countless times I have been lost, and people have accompanied me all the way to my destination. Each of these has brought joy, and every time I have tried to pay it forward, which brings another kind of joy, when you can help someone else.

Accepting that everything is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete is not an excuse to throw caution to the wind and avoid any kind of planning. For me, the opposite is true. Smart scheduling can help us prioritise what really matters, make more space in our lives for experiencing beauty and ensure we are making the most of our lives.

HOW TO PLAN FOR MORE
PERFECT MOMENTS

A well-lived life is a constant dance between dreaming and doing. The important thing here is not to obsess about perfect planning. You cannot know what is around the corner, so overplanning can lead to unnecessary stress when things change. It’s about making a few key decisions so you don’t lose your days to the whims of others.

Part A: the brain dump

You will need: sticky notes, several large sheets of paper and a pen.

1. Gather every single notebook/diary/list/note/reminder that is currently active as a way of reminding you to do things.

2. On several large sheets of paper, write a heading for each of the key areas of your life: Family, Work, Hobbies, Health, Friends, Finances, Home, etc.

3. Go through each of your to-do lists/reminders/diary/ notebooks in turn and write one item you need ‘to do’ on one sticky note, then stick it under the most relevant area. Repeat this for every single item on every single one of your to-do lists/reminders, writing down any and every task that requires time and attention from you. This may take a while.

4. When you’ve finished, make some notes about which areas of your life have the most ‘to-do’ items. What does that tell you? Are there any surprises?

Part B: the possibilities

Now imagine your life five years from now, at a point where you feel content and inspired. (We cannot know the timeline of any of our dreams, but this exercise can help make important decisions to take you in their direction.) Make notes using the following prompts:

• How old are you?

• Where are you living?

• What are you doing?

• What do you look forward to each day?

• When things are going really well, how do you feel?

• What are you grateful for?

Part C: the shift

In order to make that dream a possibility, change is inevitable. Use the questions below to help you identify what kind of changes might be involved:

• What needs to be different by this time next year in order for that dream to be even a remote possibility several years from now?

• How would you like to describe yourself a year from now?

• How would you like to describe your home a year from now?

• How would you like to describe your work life a year from now?

• How would you like to describe your finances a year from now?

• What would you like to have created a year from now?

Part D: the prioritizing

In my experience, the single-most important shift you can make to soulfully simplify your schedule is to think in terms of projects, not tasks. A project is something that has a defined beginning and end. An example might be ‘Career Change Project’, ‘Write My Book Project’ or ‘Wedding Project’. It is a way of focusing your attention on something that really matters to you. Choose a maximum of five projects that you want to bring to life in the next twelve months. You don’t have to start them all at the same time, and they can be spread over the twelve months.

Part E: the realignment

Now get five fresh pieces of paper, and write each of your projects as the heading this time. Go back to your sticky notes and reallocate them onto your project sheets. You may be shocked at how many sticky notes you have left unassigned, showing just how committed you are to things that have nothing to do with the life you want to be living.

Part F: a new way of planning

Make a plan to finish, delegate or forget about any of the to-do items that do not fit with your principal projects. For ongoing household chores and other such responsibilities, it can help to bundle them and then go through them all at once. For example, in my house we deal with all our household finances twice a month.

Then revise your weekly schedule to ensure that you are spending a significant amount of your time working on the projects that really matter to you. Instead of trying to squeeze your dreams in around the edges, diarise your projects first, and plan everything else around them.⁹

Every time we worry about money, expend energy feeling resentful about something we cannot afford or regret something we bought that we didn’t really need, we pull ourselves away from the here and now. Being anxious or distracted hampers our ability to feel wabi sabi , and experience beauty. It may seem an unlikely connection, but some degree of financial planning and money management can make a huge difference to how present we can be in our lives, and consequently how we make the most of them.

My first year in Japan was spent living with a homestay family. My homestay mother – Okāsan , as I called her – taught me everything about managing household finances. She had a part-time job comparing prices for supermarkets, before the days of price-comparison technology and online grocery shopping. She carried this savvy into her own household management, and had immaculate kakeibo (journals for household accounts), filled with columns of numbers. She was aware of every yen that came in and out of her house. In Japan, kakeibo have been popular for almost a century. These days, the top kakeibo app Zaim, invented by a woman named Takako Kansai on her commute to work, has over 7 million users.

I would often find Okāsan at the kitchen table, feeding chikuwa (processed fish sticks) to the dog with one hand, and flipping through the newspaper with the other, searching for money-off coupons. She never did more than a basket of shopping at a time, always waiting until the end of the day to get the bargains.

At the time, I was living on a very tight budget, as a student on the other side of the world from home. My room and board were covered, but the rest was up to me. At the beginning of each month, I would buy a batch of bus tickets for the rainy days when I couldn’t cycle to school, put a little aside for my exploration fund and then go to the bank for a pile of ¥100 coins. I would stack these up in piles of four and tape them together, one pile for each lunchtime. A coffee in a local kissaten (coffee shop) would set you back around ¥250, so ¥400 was not much of a budget for lunch. It would stretch to a bowl of rice and some soup, or a bag of raisin buns from the shop across from our classroom. Sometimes I’d sacrifice my lunch for a new pen or some cute stickers, Japanese stationery being a guilty pleasure of mine that remains to this day.

What I learned from my Japanese Okāsan was the importance of clarity, priority and practice around finances. Keeping a kakeibo of my income and expenditure helped me understand what I had access to. I also kept notes of my savings, so I always knew where I was. I prioritised what mattered to me (getting to school, having adventures and lunch/stationery, mostly in that order). And then I made it a habit, checking in weekly. These are habits I have carried with me ever since, and I still keep my own version of a kakeibo to this day.

DECLUTTERING FINANCES

To declutter your finances in a soulfully simple way, ask yourself these questions:*

Clarity

• What exactly is coming in?

• What exactly is going out? Where is it going?

• What are your net assets? (In the broadest terms, this is the saleable value of everything significant you own, including savings and investments, minus everything you owe.) If you are in a long-term relationship, what is your shared position?

• Are there any places you have been spending money based on a vision of an elusive ‘perfect life’, which you no longer feel the need to chase?

• How do you feel about what you have discovered?

Whatever you discover, remember, you are where you are. Use your self-acceptance tools from Chapter 2 (see p. 26 ) to respond to any feelings of regret or anxiety that arise based on how you have been spending money. What matters is what you do next.

Priority

• What do you really value?

• What are you actively prioritising in the way you are using your money? Does this fit with what you value? If not, what do you need to change?

• Where are you spending money on things you don’t really care about? What’s stopping you from cutting out this expenditure altogether?

• How could you better use your money as a tool to invest in your current and future wellbeing and happiness?

Practice

• What do you need to change to make this happen?

• How can you make this part of your daily, weekly or monthly routine, so mindful spending and saving become a habit?

When you have true clarity around your financial situation, and make financial decisions and plans based on what really matters to you and your family, you can reduce or remove three major sources of stress:

• Future resentment about things you can’t afford because of the things you bought that you don’t need

• Worry about how you will afford to support yourself and your family in the future

This makes room for you to carve out your own perfectly imperfect life, and frees you up to look for happiness right where you are.

• You will not be here for ever. Neither will your loved ones. Make the most of each other and of each day.

• The only true perfection is found in fleeting moments of beauty. Cherish each one.

HOW TO PLAN FOR MORE PERFECT MOMENTS

DECLUTTERING FINANCES

TRY IT: NOTICING ALL THE THINGS

HOW TO PLAN FOR MORE
PERFECT MOMENTS