At a brocante in France (flea market), I found a glass decanter with a broken top, reglued by someone. I could see the crack, but the faceting, the shape, the way light moved through the glass — it was magnificent anyway. I bought it and turned it into a vase. The break didn’t ruin it. The break was part of what made me stop and look twice. What a story it must have.

That decanter is wabi-sabi. A Japanese worldview built on two ideas: wabi, the beauty of simplicity and humility, an unpretentious life lived without excess; and sabi, the character time and wear leave behind—the patina, the crack, the fade that no new object has yet earned. Together they say something most of the world resists: imperfection isn’t a flaw to fix. It’s evidence of a life lived—something to be treasured.

I think of weathered wood: how a beam that’s silvered and cracked in the sun is often more prized than one still raw and new. Furniture makers seek that look out on purpose. Nobody sands it away.

And now let’s turn wabi-sabi to ourselves because it is relevant since we are related to everything. I live this view more each year as I mature: the wrinkles, the greying hair, the lines earned through decades. I don’t hide any of it. I celebrate it. This is at the heart of what I call Sagerism: not declining, but deepening. Youth to middle age to Sager to Vintage, only getting better with age. Each stage isn’t a step down; it’s a stage of the same wabi-sabi object, gaining character it didn’t have before.

Wabi-sabi is freedom. Freedom from the convention that insists we quiet down, slow down, and eventually disappear into retirement because that’s what’s expected. I’m not accepting that road, and neither are the other Sagers I know. We’re not resting in a back room on a shelf. We’re still very much alive, useful, still weathered and whole, still worth the same close look I gave that decanter.

The break in the glass never made it less beautiful. It made it honest. That’s wabi-sabi — and increasingly, that’s me.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This matters too – What Is Your Vintage Way?

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