The bluebells in Emo woods are just beginning to wilt. A brief week of beauty shortly to be gone for this year. The Japanese have a word for this  bittersweet awareness of the impermanence of beauty and life – 物の哀れ mono no aware  – often observed when the cheery blossoms bloom and evoke both joy and melancholy, reminding us of life’s transience. Every encounter is unique and will never happen again.

If we were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino,

never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama,

but lingered on forever in this world,

how things would lose their power to move us!

The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

Yoshida Kenkō, 1283–1350, Japanese author and Buddhist monk, Essays in Idleness