With age, I have developed a quiet awareness—a deliberate minimalism that allows me to step back from the current of life, much as an artist steps back from a canvas to see it whole. I am a solitary person by nature. I have little appetite for the frenzy of our times: the endless accumulation of possessions, the demands of social obligations, or the constant stream of noise competing for our attention. I prefer distance, silence, and the freedom to observe without being swept along.
There is a Japanese word that captures something of what I feel: komorebi (木漏れ日).
It describes sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees, scattering shifting patterns of light and shadow across the ground. Yet it also speaks to me of the fleeting beauty of things that cannot be held still. It stirs a quiet blend of serenity and melancholy, a feeling that passes through my senses and reaches the deepest part of my being, where I feel closest to my true self.
Komorebi brings to mind Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both touch on light, shadow, and the limits of human perception. Yet while Plato urges us to look beyond appearances, I find myself lingering over them.
A breeze moves the branches, the light shifts, and the pattern changes. What appears in one moment will never be exactly the same again. Nothing needs to be captured, explained, or possessed. I only need to be there to witness it.
Beauty has less to do with permanence than with attention. A moment does not lose its value because it passes; its transience is part of what makes it matter.
We spend so much of our lives trying to hold on to people, places, feelings, and even former versions of ourselves that no longer exist. Yet life, like sunlight through the leaves, is always moving. What slips away may never return, but we have known it, if only for a moment.
To notice komorebi is to pause and recognize that impermanence is not the enemy of beauty. It is inseparable from it.
The light filters through. The leaves move. For a fleeting moment, the world is simply as it is.
That is enough.
