Western culture treats ageing as decline. Japan treats it as maturation. The same process that gives wood its patina, fabric its softness, and stone its moss gives the human body its character. In Japan, the word for 'old' and the word for 'interesting' share a root. Your body at sixty is not a degraded version of your body at thirty. It is a different kind of beautiful.

Going Deeper

Explore this concept further in The Japanese Art of Mono no Aware by Takeshi Mori.

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