Wabi Sabi —
It’s funny how much you think you know yourself — until life begins to quietly dismantle that certainty. For as long as I can remember, I’ve thought highly of who I was. But recently, I’ve found myself in situations that have forced me to confront a difficult possibility: that I may not really know myself at all.
You see, I had a problem.
Growing up, I constructed a version of myself. It was shaped by everything around me — my upbringing, the movies and series I watched, the books I read, the songs I listened to, the church, what people said about me, and what I observed in others. All of it came together to form a picture of who I believed I was.
For the most part, I believed I fit into a particular role — a certain archetype. In some ways, I still do. I’m beginning to realise that the person I thought I was — and the way I thought I loved — were both inherited ideas, not lived truths. There’s still so much for me to learn about myself, and about the person I want to become.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Wabi sabi is a way of seeing the world that finds beauty and harmony in what is simple, imperfect, natural, modest, and mysterious.
Lately, I’ve been trying to apply that lens to something more personal — what it means for me to love.
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If there’s beauty in imperfection, then maybe there’s also truth in unlearning who you thought you were.
I think there’s a lot of truth in Sigmund Freud’s early stages of development theory — the idea that our childhood experiences shape who we become as adults. Looking back, I can see how much of my understanding of love was inherited rather than discovered.
I learned love from romantic movies and television. It was relentless, open, and daring. It meant going to the ends of the earth for someone — your person — because of love.
But what I thought was my idea of love was not my reality.
In practice, I often did the opposite. I kept my distance. Love, to me, meant distance. It meant downplaying my feelings. It meant becoming a version of myself that felt safe — but not real.
Pretty normal, right?
The unsettling part is that I didn’t even realise I was doing this — until I found myself caring deeply about someone who made these patterns impossible to ignore.
And so, here I am. Trying to make sense of my archetype. Unlearning what once felt natural. Unlearning what once felt natural, and learning, slowly, imperfectly, how to be real.
Wabi-sabi is teaching me that there is beauty even in the imperfections of how I’ve understood myself. That in acknowledging what’s misaligned, I can begin again, moving with intention toward a truer, more human version of who I am.
