Life is filled with contrasts.  For example we’ve all taken exams where we are to compare and contrast two ideas, on the one hand find their similarities and on the other, their differences.  We find textural contrast when we eat lightly boiled broccoli with grilled salmon, mashed potatoes with crunchy vegetables and chewy meat.

Here’s an example of what is called simultaneous contrast.  A bar of middle gray is surrounded with a wider bar of black shifting to white.  Despite knowing that the gray in the center is the same in all its parts, it still looks as if it is going from lighter to darker gray.  There is good reason for this, the nerve fibers just behind the retina of the eye look for contrast and magnify it.

We also experience contrast in succession as well.  For example, in listening to the four movements of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, we experience “fast”, “faster”, “slow and stately”, and then “very fast”.

Wabi sabi deals with impermanence, imperfection and simplicity (see this post as well).  I am seeing impermanence as a state of being that transforms over time, going from the young and fresh to the old, experienced and not as strong, another form of contrast in succession.  If our lives were compressed into a single year and if the actuarial tables are correct, I am in the October of my life.  If, when I was in the March of my life I was not thinking about the later months to come, I certainly am now.  Not at all with sorrow but with a sense of wonder.

Autumn is a time of rapid change in the outdoors.  At its beginning, there is much green, quickly followed by red and yellow and ending with bare limbs on the trees.  It is a time of considerable contrast.  And I suppose it is this rapid change which gives the season its special piquancy.  I’ve always loved this season, even over spring when so much of nature is fresh and beautiful.

I don’t know how I would have responded to the idea of wabi sabi when I was young but now I think in terms of simplifying and finding beauty in what is, rather than what might be if only everything had turned out “right.”  I would not say that I am either longing for the future or for the past.  I long to experience what is.

My mother lived very much in the present the last seven years of her life.  She was in a dementia unit.  Had she known this mental decline  going to happen she would not have looked forward to it.  But, although she was always generous and cheerful, she became even more so on that unit.  I saw her nearly every day and, if you let go of the need to carry on a “meaningful” conversation in words, it was a beautiful experience for me and for those around her.   I’m not looking forward to that, should I live that long, but Mom showed how it was possible to contribute to the world even in that state.  She dealt only with what is.

This time of life as a time of wonder.  There is so much to see, hear, feel, taste.  I hope that is still true in November and December.  I’m going to assume that it will be.