In our world today where nothing but morbidity surrounds us, its hard to have a day without hearing about death and the terrible conditions. These conditions have affected everybody and the general mental health has been on a decline since last year. We were cut off from our friends, the outside world, our favorite coffee place, the restaurants by the college that we went to grab a bite between classes or after a long day, so on and so forth. We have been isolated in our personal islands in our own personal spaces for more than over a year. In these I myself have often questioned the future and what it holds for me and have caused myself to worry, at times losing sight of what I actually wanted from my life. I turned to the book written by Yukari Mitsuhashi on Ikigai (giving everyday meaning and joy) a Japanese concept and took some time to reflect upon my own life and how I spend my time on a daily basis.
The Japanese word ikigai is composed of two kanji characters: ‘iki’ meaning life and ‘gai’ meaning value, which essentially can be broken down to the meaning of life. However, as heavy a concept it might sound, in reality it simply means the reason you get up in the morning. In its basic essence it means the joy a person finds in living his daily life without which his life feels incomplete. This joy could come out of an activity a person does or a person this person interacts with or something that he just does to feel relaxed. It could as simple as eating a certain specialty of food or choosing what movie to watch while you eat your dinner or as complex as pursuing your career and the work you do. A persons Ikigai can change with over a period of time based on their priorities at that given point in time. So, the question would be what is your ikigai, the answer to that is not so set in stone as every human is different, has different perspectives and have many different motivations as to why they do things in a certain way. Every human being has their own ikigai and is personal to them as it brings them the most joy.
Ikigai is basically a type of happiness that one seeks not for the long term, but that on a daily basis, very often confuse the phrase ‘value of life’ to something on a long term basis and try to act in that way very often losing the little joys that their daily life brings about. Ikigai might be completely unrelated to what your goal in life might be in many cases a person’s ikigai very much linked to their hobbies, and just like hobbies a person can have more than one ikigai at a time and keeps changing. Your ikigai is something that will grow and change with you keep changing a person over the course of time. Knowing your ikigai takes time and effort, but knowing your ikigai can be pretty helpful as it allows you to :-
· Feel happy and content
· Find a stable sense of mind
· Have better control over your day to day life
· Grow and progress
· Find a sense of purpose
· Feel more driven and motivated
· Become more proactive
· Find vitality to live and move forward
Finding your ikigai will not miraculously bring catastrophic positive changes in your life, but you will be conscious of why you are doing what you are doing and maybe make your life more enjoyable and help you to take decisions that help you fulfill your ikigai. Finding your ikigai isn’t necessarily a deep self-discovering journey but maybe a walk in the neighborhood of what you like and brings you joy in your life on a normal day. Here are some pointers as to how you could find your own ikigai:-
· Focus on the world around you, it is really good to know about yourself and discovering more about yourself, but your life isn’t just made up of only you, it Is also made up of the interactions you have with other people or your environment and your surroundings. After all, human beings are social creatures and we feel the most alive when someone reacts to what we say or what we do, if no one ever reacted to anything we said or did, it would be pretty dull.
· Focus on giving more than receiving, it brings us a strange sense of fulfillment when we give others something or contributing to something, it is the reason why people still give gifts to each other even though the process is not very economical and can be very time consuming.
· Focus on something specific rather than something large and abstract, you may want to stop all wars from happening in the future but it would be much more impact and much more fulfilling f if you raised the awareness about countries plagued by it or maybe provide a small donation to help those effected by it.
· Focus on how you feel about things rather than the logical outcomes, it may be a logical decision to not have a pet since it’s an investment of time, money and effort, but seeing your puppy’s or cat’s eyes gives a different sense of joy and makes it worthwhile to have a pet.
I still have to discover my own ikigai, and will be taking a small stroll to find it, and I most likely will tell all of you about it, maybe in the next article.
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