Imperfectly Lovely

MindcampArticle, Fun, Mindcamp 2018, Mindcampology

Our theme for this year’s Mindcamp is wabi sabi, a Japanese concept that calls attention to the beauty of imperfection.

Just about everywhere you look, people seem to obsess over perfection—in their work, in their social presentation, in the things they wear, drive, and live in.

Isn’t it interesting that despite our six-sigma, perfection-seeking mindsets, old-fashioned, warp-prone, scratch-scarred vinyl records are selling like hotcakes?

I’ve never bought a hotcake, but I hear they sell well.

For the past ten years, sales of vinyl LPs, like the one above, have been growing at double-digit rates—and fetching big bucks. You can buy a vinyl pressing of Abbey Road for anywhere between $25 and $500. And in some cases, the more warped it is, the higher the price.

What’s the deal here?

Well, some people think that analog just sounds better than digital. Others are into vinyl LPs because they see them as ‘collectors items’. But I think there’s more to it than that. Every vinyl record is different, noticeably, palpably different. My Abbey Road sounds different from yours, and yours sounds different from your best friend’s. Each one of them is unique—not by design, but because no one of them is perfect.

Kind of like us.

Wouldn’t it be boring if people were as cookie-cutter uniform as the ever-perfect CD, each of us being absolutely, perfectly consistent all the time, every time? We all know, intuitively, that it’s our differences, our flaws, our scars, and our inconsistencies that make us human, that make us interesting, that make us lovable, that make us… well, us.

That’s why we chose wabi sabi as our theme this year. We want to celebrate the beauty of imperfection. We want to celebrate the creativity in every mispronounced word, every cracked note, every crooked brush stroke, and every unique thought we all have.

Your Mindcamp Faeries are all looking forward to seeing you at Mindcamp this summer and to greeting every imperfect one of you with our own imperfect, wabi sabi selves.

Comments 4

  1. What a great theme. I can’t even make a mistact in my typing without it being corrected or like being told that I shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition like with…without it being corrected.
    So here’s to wabi saybi, may it flourish in al its impurfecions.

  2. For our French-speaking friends :
    Quand l’erreur n’est plus une horreur, l’imperfection devient une perfection. et réciproquement.

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