I try to catch it, I try to save it, I try to control the damage.
But it’s too late.
The most expensive wine bottle I ever bought is nosediving toward the ground. For the few milliseconds before impact, I find myself in a liminal state between wholeness and destruction. I know what will follow. Crimson red will splatter on the white-tiled floor. I’ll start screaming. I’ll hate myself.
Then, it’s time —
Glass kisses ceramic.
Like a star’s supernova, the bottle bursts across the tiny universe of my childhood bedroom. Splinters and droplets splash on loose papers, white socks, and my bare shins.
My insides mirror the scene. Pain, regret, and fury blast through my veins. I don’t know where all these feelings come from. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what happened.
It’s only years later that I will have discovered the key I would desperately need in this situation. And not just this situation but so many other instances of loss, impermanence, and collapse.
That key is mono no aware.
Mono No Aware: The Sentiment of Minimalism
Mono no aware is a core sentiment of Japanese culture and deeper minimalism.
It literally translates to “the pathos of things.” But more loosely, it could also mean “the beauty of things passing.” As an emotion, it falls somewhere between sorrow and serenity. And so, to feel mono no aware is to experience impermanence, the inevitability of change, and the tranquility of transience — often all these things at once.
As Kyle Chayka writes in The Longing for Less:
“Mono no aware is the beauty of transience, the way a falling leaf or sunlight gliding the edge of a rock at the end of the day can incite a sudden gut-punch awareness that life is evanescent.”
So, in essence, mono no aware means internalizing the reality that everything in life must pass one day. And yes, this reality implies melancholy and sorrow. But also serenity, peace, and lightness.
To me, mono no aware is a deeply minimalist emotion. I would even argue it’s the emotion of minimalism. But not in the way you might think. Mono no aware isn’t a driving force to renounce all your possessions, thus creating an echo chamber where nothing ever changes, nothing’s left to chance, and nothing’s out of place.
This would be an illusion.
Instead, mono no aware is the realization — the feeling — that you never really had control over most things in life anyway. Wine bottles break, political crises erupt, friends die — these events enter life without warning, no matter the tidiness of your bedroom. But it’s this fragility that makes life infinitely precious. And so, if we understand minimalism merely as a tool to control our possessions, we’re at risk of denying some of the most vital elements in life:
Impermanence and ambiguity.
Mono no aware offers a more lifelike approach to minimalism. It shows us that the key to an intentional life isn’t less stuff. But instead: breaking the illusion that stuff lasts forever. Appreciating things for their transience, not their status. Coming to peace with everything that is.
Here. Now.
A Ferrari loses much of its allure as a status symbol when you realize you can’t take it to your grave. In return, this realization sparks a skin-crawling sense of beauty and appreciation. Melancholic yet serene. At which point you probably realize that you don’t even need to own a Ferrari to experience this special flavor of mono no aware.
Appreciation doesn’t require ownership.
For this reason, mono no aware goes beyond possessions. It reaches all existing things. Once we find a deeper connection outside of our belongings — in nature, relationships, art — we stop compensating for our emptiness with things we don’t need. We stop clinging to stuff we already have. And we stop wishing to fix everything that’s broken.
But this is where it gets tricky.
The Powerful Truth Behind Broken Aesthetics
For a moment I just stand there, observing the bottle’s bleeding carcass, watching it ooze into the gaps between the tiles. I stay petrified until my brother comes rushing into my room. “Oh, this is not so bad,” he says, “It’s just a bottle of wine.”
To me, it was more.
I first tasted the wine a few months into the pandemic based on the kind recommendation of a Portuguese sommelier. He thought I’d enjoy the wine’s heaviness and full body. And he was right. For a short while, the flavor washed over all my pandemic depression and loneliness. I wanted to encapsulate the moment in a screw-top jar. And I did that.
Well, almost.
Months later, I rediscovered the exact same wine in a Portuguese specialty store in Frankfurt. Pure serendipity. Despite the price tag, I immediately bought the last bottle on the shelf. I’m going to save this bottle, I thought, for a very special moment. Little did I know that this moment would never come. Or rather, it would come, but it never felt special enough.
What would it mean to live with mono no aware?
The 18th-century Japanese scholar Motoori Norinaga argues it’s more than a feeling. Mono no aware is also a type of knowledge. It’s something we can study, like curious scientists. Norinaga writes:
“To know mono no aware is to discern the power and essence, not just of the moon and the cherry blossoms, but of every single thing existing in this world, and to be stirred by each of them, so as to rejoice at happy occasions, … to be saddened by sad occurrences, and to love what should be loved.”
Perhaps there’s a way to let ourselves affect not just by shiny, new, expensive, intact things. But also — and especially — by dusty, old, cheap, broken things.
Norinaga concludes:
“… people who know mono no aware have a heart; those who do not are heartless.”
The smashed bottle, the shards, the spills — maybe all this was, in fact, the very special moment I’d hoped for. At the very least, it had much more heart and authenticity than all the moments that never felt special enough.
We often want to fix cracks, shards, and dents. Remove them from our sight. But isn’t it that broken things carry a much deeper truth about life than polished ones? Ultimately, broken aesthetics symbolize the one truth we all must face. The truth that evokes all instances of happiness and sadness in life.
It’s the truth that everything must pass.
Regrettably, we’ve banished this truth from our busy, everyday lives.
How We Censored Impermanence
I soak up the wine with paper towels. I sweep the shards. After I vacuum the last tiny glass fragments, mop the floor, and take the trash out, there’s no sign that the wine bottle ever existed.
And yet, it takes me weeks to get over my remorse. I should’ve drunk the bottle while I had the chance. I shouldn’t have been so stupid and knocked the bottle over. I should’ve been more careful.
I was shoulding all over myself.
Why do we harbor this infinite desire to cling to things? Why is mono no aware a blind spot on our emotional compasses?
One cause might be that modern societies tend to censor impermanence. Contemporary architecture is stuffed with seemingly indestructible materials: concrete, plastic, steel. Animals are slaughtered on an industrial scale, albeit out of our sight. Nuggets, burgers, and sausages disguise the sacrifice and pain behind the meal. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a dead person.
Are these attempts to assuage our fear of dying?
If so, they’re futile.
And then, of course, there’s the vicious marketing machine of consumerism that ties products to our identity. It’s a clever mechanism. Sales tacticians know humans are flawed, so they sell products that promise to fix those flaws. As in: Believe me, you’ll be much happier once you try this great thing. Alas, “this great thing” always becomes the next, and the next, and the next.
The result?
We get stuck in a consumerist treadmill where we derive our self-worth from the things we own, not realizing that they actually own us. So it’s not just that we cling to things. Things also cling to us. No wonder we find it so hard to let go: it would mean giving up our identity, our pride.
The beauty of mono no aware is that it not only highlights impermanence in daily life, it also helps us embrace our brokenness. It doesn’t try to fix flaws or cover up the brevity of life. Instead, it worships these things as vital parts of the human condition.
So far so good. But how can we cultivate mono no aware?
Two Simple Questions to Practice Mono No Aware
Following Norinaga’s philosophy, we might start by becoming mindful of ephemerality in daily life: cracks in a porcelain vase, fallen autumn leaves, the calm before a thunderstorm. We might ask ourselves:
Where does mono no aware hide in this very moment?
Impermanence is all around us. We just need to find it.
Another way to cultivate mono no aware is to inject presence through intentional impermanence. In simpler terms, it boils down to asking this simple question:
How would I feel if this was the last time I got to experience this?
“This” could be anything. Watching the sunset, kissing your partner, playing the piano — really anything you think, feel, or do. If you truly face and chew on the question, there’s a good chance you’ll feel the “sudden gut-punch awareness” Chayka was referring to.
You’ll feel mono no aware.
The Minimalist Serenity of Mono No Aware
I turn around the first corner of my evening walk. A soft summer breeze flirts with my skin.
Usually, this is one of the quiet corners of the city. But tonight, the entire street is buzzing with life. Trumpets blare into dusk. Percussions pierce through the warm air. Jingling wine glasses mingle with agitated chit-chats of people who fill the last empty spots, like water flowing into an ice cube tray.
I pause my walk, resting my gaze on the people, the laughs, the wine. The joie de vivre injects a sense of impermanence into my soul.
Could this be the last time?
I get lost in my thoughts. Soon this party will end, I ponder. Soon, it will be completely dark, and everyone will head home, leaving behind a deserted street, a hollow shell. Soon, this summer will end, and it’ll join the ranks of many other summers until it’s my last summer. All this will pass.
I look at my arms.
Goosebumps.
But there’s no dread, no terror. Instead, when I start walking again, I feel light and serene. All the clutter, all the heavy worries disappeared — however momentarily. I feel minimal yet full. I feel no past, no future. Just this moment.
I feel mono no aware.