The Question Every Object Should Answer

I heard a story from my friend about how her grandmother kept a rice bowl for sixty years. Chipped at the rim, glaze worn thin where her thumbs always rested. When she died, her mother couldn't throw it away. Because it's every breakfast she ever ate.

We think about that bowl now, in a time when we're surrounded by things that mean nothing. When we accumulate and discard without pause. When "new" is always better and "old" just means obsolete.

The crisis of meaninglessness

We live in an age of abundance that somehow feels empty. Our homes are full—closets overflowing, storage units rented, garages packed—and yet nothing in them carries weight. Not the weight of memory. Not the weight of story. Not the weight of mattering.

Fast fashion worn three times. Furniture that collapses after a year. Gadgets obsolete before they're paid off. Objects designed not to last, not to mean anything, not to become part of your life—just to be consumed and replaced. This isn't just waste. It's a spiritual crisis.

Because when nothing we own means anything, we begin to wonder if we mean anything. If our daily lives—the meals we make, the rooms we inhabit, the small rituals that hold us together—matter at all.

Mottainai: Beyond the buzzword

The Japanese have a word that's becoming trendy now: mottainai (もったいない). You'll see it on eco-friendly packaging, in corporate sustainability reports, translated simply as "waste not, want not."

But that translation flattens something profound into something merely practical.

Mottainai is not a strategy. It's a feeling—a pang of regret, almost a spiritual discomfort, at the wastefulness of not honoring something's full potential. It's the quiet grief you feel when something valuable is discarded before its time, when potential goes unrealized, when care is dismissed as inconvenient.

My friend's grandmother didn't keep that rice bowl for sixty years because she was "sustainable." She kept it because throwing away something that had served her faithfully every single morning would have felt like betrayal. Like ingratitude. Like mottainai.

This is what gets lost when we reduce ancient wisdom to modern buzzwords.

"Sustainability" is about systems, metrics, carbon footprints—all important, but external. Mottainai is about relationship. About recognizing that objects have given something to you, and you owe them the dignity of full use, proper care, and respectful end-of-life.

It's the difference between recycling because you should and mending because you couldn't bear not to.

What craft remembers

Traditional craft operates on a different logic entirely. A logic so old it feels revolutionary now. A Japanese carpenter selects wood, studies the grain, joins pieces without nails—creating furniture meant to outlive him. Why? Because his work is his signature across time. Because quality is how you say: I was here. I cared. This matters.

He builds with mottainai in his bones—not wasting the potential of the wood, not wasting the time of the person who grew the tree, not wasting the future of the person who will inherit the table. A potter in Mashiko throws the same bowl shape her teacher taught her, which his teacher taught him, back through generations. Not because she lacks imagination, but because repetition is how meaning deepens. Each bowl is both new and ancient—her hands answering a question posed centuries ago.

When that bowl chips, you don't discard it. You practice kintsugi—repairing it with gold, making the break part of its story. Because mottainai. Because this bowl has held your meals, your hands, your mornings. To discard it for convenience would be to discard all that relationship.

A textile weaver in Kyoto spends six months on a single piece. Not because she's slow, but because slowness is the point. Time woven into thread becomes visible care. Becomes proof that something in this world is worth six months of human attention.

And when you receive such a piece, you understand instinctively: this cannot be disposed of lightly. Too much has been given. To waste it would be mottainai in its deepest sense—a spiritual failure to honor what was offered. This is what craft knows that we've forgotten: meaning is made through relationship over time. And relationship creates obligation—not burden, but the beautiful responsibility to care for what has cared for you.

The objects that hold us

I have a tea cup now. Bought from a maker whose hands I shook, whose workshop I stood in, whose choice of clay and glaze I understand—not fully, but enough.

It's not expensive. It's not precious. But it means something.

It means: every morning when I hold it, I remember there are still people in the world who care about their work. Who make things meant to last. Who believe that how we begin our day—what we hold, what touches our lips—matters. It means: I am connected to someone I barely know, across distance, through this object we both touched.

It means: I chose this, intentionally, instead of grabbing whatever was cheapest or fastest.

And that choice, repeated daily, changes something. Not the world, maybe. But me. The way I move through my morning. The pause I take. The attention I give.

When it chips—and it will, because I use it daily—I won't replace it. I'll repair it. Not because I'm virtuous or "sustainable," but because by then it will have held a thousand mornings. To discard that would feel like mottainai. Like throwing away the mornings themselves.

Small things. But meaning lives in small things.

Why this matters now

We're living through what some call a meaning crisis. Record levels of anxiety, depression, purposelessness—especially among young people who've grown up in a world of infinite choice and zero weight.

We talk endlessly about sustainability—reducing our carbon footprint, recycling properly, buying eco-friendly products. All necessary. All important.

But we rarely talk about mottainai—about the spiritual cost of treating everything as disposable. About what it does to us when we accumulate and discard without grief, without gratitude, without the sense that anything we own has given us something worth honoring.

"Sustainability" can be outsourced to corporations, to systems, to better supply chains.

Mottainai cannot. It requires you to be in relationship with your objects. To feel something when they break. To remember they were made by hands. To understand that using them fully, caring for them properly, is a form of respect—for the maker, for the materials, for your own life that unfolds around these daily tools.

We've been told freedom is having everything. But maybe freedom is actually choosing fewer, better things and letting them matter. We've been told efficiency is the highest value. But maybe what we actually need is the opposite—slowness, care, attention, things made and used with intention.

We've been told the old ways are obsolete. But maybe what's actually obsolete is the belief that meaning can be manufactured at scale, that significance can be mass-produced, that anything made quickly for everyone will matter deeply to anyone.

Craft whispers something different. It says: What matters is made slowly. What lasts is made with care. What holds meaning is chosen, used, tended, repaired, passed forward.

This is mottainai in practice. Not as a buzzword, but as a way of life.

An invitation

Look around your home tonight. Is there anything there that would make someone pause if they found it after you're gone? Anything that carries story? Anything that would answer the question: What mattered to the person who lived here? If not, maybe it's time to change that.

Not by buying more. By buying differently. By choosing one object—just one—made by hands that cared. Used daily. Allowed to become part of your story. Cared for when it breaks. Kept until its potential is fully realized. Not because you're "being sustainable." But because the alternative—accumulating things that mean nothing, discarding them without grief—slowly hollows you out. Because in a world that tells us nothing matters, the quiet act of choosing things that do is rebellion.

And your grandmother's rice bowl? The one she used for sixty years? That's not sentimentality. That's not even just sustainability. That's mottainai—the deep respect for what has served you, the refusal to waste potential, the understanding that objects and people exist in relationship, and relationship creates meaning.

That's proof that a human life was lived with attention. With ritual. With the belief that even breakfast—especially breakfast—deserves beauty.

That's meaning.

And we need it now more than ever.

✨ At BeART World JAPAN, we share stories of makers who still believe daily life deserves care—and objects deserve to be honored for their full potential.