Finding beauty in imperfection

A shift in perspective bears beautiful fruit

A few weeks ago we looked at wabi sabi Stoicism, a combination of Japanese Zen aesthetic sensibility with Stoic principles. Today I’d like to extend this idea beyond the aesthetic sphere into ethics, thinking about how the philosophical celebration of impermanence and imperfection can lead us to find beauty in the people, places, and things happening around us.

Just to recap quickly, we said that a Stoic version of wabi sabi would center around “enjoying the beauty of things while knowing that they’re as transient as everything else” and “appreciating loveliness of form and function where we find it rather than wishing for a different type of beauty that isn’t present and may not exist anyway.” It’s all about learning to see beauty in unexpected and overlooked places, even in things that may traditionally be seen as ugly or unwanted.

This attitude dovetails with the Stoic attitude of acceptance and amor fati. (Just to note: amor fati was not a phrase used by Stoics in ancient times—it seems to have been popularized by Nietzsche—but it’s a nice catchphrase so I’m using it here.) We are always surrounded by things we might not choose, if we had a choice: illness, pain, hardship, death, destruction, malicious people, and the sheer unfairness of the world we live in. And yet, we are also surrounded at all times by great beauty: the sun rising and setting every day; the functioning of billions of cells in our bodies in a way that gives us life; the creation of new people, animals, and plants; the efficient absorption of old material into the earth and subsequent transformation into new material—just to name a few.

Humans have a well-known mental bias toward the negative, and our minds are easily captured by the suffering and ugliness of the world. We tend to fixate on the (so-called) bad parts and ignore the (so-called) good ones. But in the cosmos as it currently exists, we can’t have the good without the bad, or the bad without the good. All those things we don’t prefer, like death and pain, always exist in conjunction with those things we do prefer, like life and friendship. They always go together.

What the Stoics ask us to do is transform our understanding of the world by looking at the whole picture—the good alongside the bad, the ugly alongside the beautiful. If you take a god’s-eye view and look at the universe as a whole, it is breath-takingly beautiful and mind-blowingly amazing. Its vastness and complexity exceeds anything the human brain can comprehend. It is beautiful on a cosmic scale. But in order for this optimal beauty to exist, the unpleasant parts must exist too. They are only unpleasant from a human point of view—our death, our hardship, our injustice. From the point of view of the universe, these are just small bits that contribute to the greater whole. And because the whole is beautiful, the Stoics say, the small bits are beautiful too. The beautiful whole couldn’t exist without the smaller contributing parts, even if those small parts in themselves aren’t that beautiful.

As always, Marcus Aurelius puts this better than I ever can, so here’s what he has to say about it:

All things flow from there, arising directly from that common governing principle, or else as a secondary effect. Thus even the gaping jaws of a lion, and poison, and every noxious thing, from a thistle to a quagmire, are by-products of what is sublime and noble. Do not suppose, then, that these are alien to what you revere, but direct your thoughts to the common source of all things. (Meditations, 6.36)

Because we enjoy the beauty of the whole, we must embrace the thistles, predators, and quagmires (of the literal and figurative kind). We can’t have the one without the others. It’s the nature of things.

Of course, the ancient Stoics had an additional reason for revering the common source of all things: their belief in a divine intelligence that pervades everything in the universe and providentially orders the world. But you don’t have to agree in a literal way with the Stoics’ take on providence in order to find beauty in imperfection. Personally I think it’s clear we are all interconnected in a complex system, and what happens even in one small part of the system impacts the greater whole. Everything that exists in the known universe is made from the same materials, so in this way we are all related and all subject to the same physical laws. There is no question that we all have our individual parts to play in the greater whole. As Marcus says so beautifully:

Reflect again and again on how all things in the universe are bound up together and interrelated. For all things, in a sense, are mutually intertwined, and by virtue of that all are dear to one another; for one thing follows duly upon another because of the tensile movement and the common breath that pervades throughout and the unity of all substance. (Meditations, 6.38)

All things are interwoven, and the bond that unites them is sacred, and hardly anything is alien to any other thing, for they have been ranged together and are jointly ordered to form a common universe. (Meditations, 7.9)

All of which points us toward the ethical imperative of appreciating the universe as it is, warts and all. That doesn’t mean we can’t change some things. Of course we can. But we can’t change the general conditions of our existence, and we can’t eliminate everything we don’t like. Most of it we will just have to accept. And not just accept with a sigh and a grimace, but accept with an open heart as part of the magnificent whole.

So here’s where the Stoics challenge us to find beauty in imperfection. Because all those imperfections are part of the beautiful whole, we can learn to appreciate and love them. We may not like poisonous snakes or the process of aging, but like everything else, they have their part to play:

So if a person is endowed with sensibility and has a deep enough insight into the workings of the universe, he will find scarcely anything which fails to please him in some way by its presence, even among those that arise as secondary effects. Such a person will view the gaping jaws of wild beasts in their physical reality with no less pleasure than the portrayals of them displayed by painters and sculptors, and he will be able to see in an old woman or old man a special kind of mature beauty, and to look on the youthful charms of his slave boys with chaste eyes. And one could cite many similar examples, which will not seem persuasive to everyone, but will only strike home with those who are genuinely familiar with nature and all her works. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 3.2)

The trick, of course, is to develop “a deep enough insight into the workings of the universe” to find the beauty in these conventionally unattractive things. This is where ethics is joined by aesthetics, as we train our powers of observation toward the overlooked and perhaps unappealing aspects of our lives. Boar spittle (to use another one of Marcus’ examples) will never be attractive to us on its own, but when viewed as part of the larger picture, we recognize its essential role in the world. It is “beautiful” because it fulfills its purpose and fits properly into the cosmic picture.

Are we cheating here by changing the definition of beauty? I would say yes and no. Yes, we are changing the definition of beauty, but it’s not cheating because we are moving from a superficial and less accurate understanding of beauty to a deeper and more accurate understanding of beauty. We are refining our sense of beauty, with the result that we find different things beautiful than before. Obviously we can still recognize the conventional beauty of Botticelli paintings and sunsets over the sea, but we are expanding our awareness to include other types of beauty as well.

As always with Stoic ideas, finding beauty in imperfection is easier said than done. I think the best strategy is to start small. Marcus recommends looking at “the by-products of natural processes” which “have a certain charm and attractiveness,” (Meditations, 3.2)—things that we don’t normally consider beautiful, like rotting fruit and dangerous animals. In my daily life this includes cracks in the walls and pavement, which I normally don’t like but which certainly fall under the category of natural processes, or unattractive fruits and vegetables that nevertheless are still tasty and nourishing. Or enjoying a rainy day when I wanted a sunny one, or finding beauty in the heavy humidity of a summer in Florida. These things all happen naturally, and to be annoyed by them is counterproductive and leads to an unhappy life.

Most important, perhaps, is applying this same mindset to the people around us. We all know no one is perfect, but many of us are still tempted to get upset when people do things we don’t like. Marcus reminds us that the annoyances are part of the total package; you can’t have the good aspects of the person without some of the bad. If your spouse or sibling has a habit that drives you crazy, remind yourself of all the good things about them. Look at the whole picture: what about this person do you love? Maybe you love their spontaneity and energy, but the flipside of that is some impulsive behavior as well. Or maybe you love their dependability and loyalty, but the flipside is their overcautious nature. You can’t have the good without a bit of the bad. (I’ll say it again: no one is perfect.)

Our goal here is not to pretend that undesirable qualities are desirable (or in Stoic terms, that dispreferred indifferents are preferred), but rather to contextualize them within the bigger picture of the person or the world as a whole. Some imperfections are unavoidable, so we may as well make peace with them. And we can even come to admire them in a certain way, as tokens of the nature of the universe. As Marcus says, “Bear in mind that, as it would be absurd to be surprised that a fig tree produces figs, it is just as absurd to be surprised that the world gives birth to the fruits which it bears by its very nature” (Meditations, 8.15). Nature’s beauties also give rise to waste products and illnesses—and really annoying people.

If you’re looking to incorporate this into your life, I think there are several ways we can look for beauty in imperfection. When thinking about something in your life, does it fulfill one of these criteria? Can you find beauty in one of these areas?

• Beauty in craftsmanship – fashioned with skill and suited for purpose

• Beauty in functionality – fulfilling its purpose

• Beauty in individuality – not imitating anything else

• Beauty in authenticity – being true to itself

• Beauty in variety – many different kinds

• Beauty in harmony – fitting into the whole

• Beauty in impermanence – representing change, decay, or potential

• Beauty in significance – contributing something to the universe

Even if something isn’t conventionally attractive, you can probably find one of these ways in which it is beautiful. Finding this special type of beauty can shift your perspective and completely change the way you look at not just the objects around you, but at life itself.

The ancient Stoics took this perspective shift to an extreme degree, with Chrysippus saying things like bedbugs are good because they wake people up in the morning. This level of finding beauty in hardship is perhaps reserved for sages (although of course Chrysippus never claimed to be a sage). But we can all make progress in our daily lives toward finding beauty in the byproducts of nature. And on that note, we’ll close with one final thought from Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 12.29):

Our security in life is to see each thing as it is in its full nature, in both its material and its causal aspect; and to do what is right and speak what is true with all our heart. What remains but to enjoy one's life, linking one good act to another, so that not even the smallest space is ever left between?

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Image credit: The Matter of Food on Unsplash