‘Ikigai’ - a Japanese Concept for finding purpose
I have been feeling increasingly drawn to Japanese culture and philosophy in recent years. One of the words that springs to mind when I think about Japan is ‘Ikigai’, a concept that translates as their ‘reason for being’, with ‘iki’ meaning ‘to live’, and ‘gai’ meaning ‘reason’.
The concept of Ikigai is rooted deeply in the Japanese culture and history. Japanese people believe that life is more valuable and meaningful when a person lives with Ikigai in mind, and that a person has a greater potential for happiness and fulfilment for doing so.
Ikigai - An Introduction
A persons ‘ikigai’ can be found at the intersection where their passions, interests and skills converge with what the world needs and what people are willing to pay for.
In an ideal world, everyone would be living in their place of ‘ikigai’, but the world isn’t that straightforward, as we all come to learn at a certain point in our lives.
An artist, for example, who is making art that only he/ she can understand, is probably going to have a hard time finding their place of Ikigai because they will struggle to turn their art into income. A high-flying salesman might also struggle to find their Ikigai when they find themselves selling products that they have no love or passion for.
This is a place that I found myself in seven years ago when I suddenly found myself selling practical, electrical goods for a UK wholesaler. This period of employment sucked the soul from me, and I embarked upon a long and grueling quest to find myself and my purpose, and, resultingly, my own Ikigai.
Through my creative endeavors, I have found what it is that I love to do. I have also found what it is that I am good at: and that is, I believe, communicating and teaching, as well as telling the raw truth and helping people to live up to their highest potential.
With the current state of the world, and general increase in people going out on soul-searching missions to seek the deeper answers to this existence, I have also identified a great need in this world. I have tried and failed many times over the past few years to turn my love of photography into something that makes me enough money to live on and provide for a family, but, in recent times, I have begun to find some success in this area.
I am, therefore, getting incredibly close to finding my own Ikigai, after years of working for ‘the man’ and giving my energy away to areas that do not align with me. It is with this thought in mind that I write this article.
Finding your Ikigai
If you are someone that is struggling to find a sense of purpose in this life, working a job that brings little fulfilment to your life, then try asking yourself a few simple questions, such as:
What do I love to do?
What am I good at?
What activities bring me to a place of stillness, where the internal noise becomes silent?
What would I do if I knew that I was going to die tomorrow?
What mark would I like to leave on the world?
What job or profession aligns with all of the above?
It might, at first, be difficult to find the answers to some of these questions. A journal can be an essential tool in your journey of self-discovery. It can also help if you turn to some friends or a partner to get an outside perspective of what other people think about what you might be able to bring to the world.
To find your Ikigai, you must be willing to look deeply within at the things that you are most passionate about. Then you can find the mediums through which you can express these things to the world.
When I think about my own life and the skills that have brought me here to this place, I can see that my skills were never as simple as creating photographs and writing. Where I believe that I have excelled throughout my life is in skills such as listening and watching. I have been deeply passionate about observing the world around me. This widely translates into my art, as I observe the landscape that I find myself in with my camera. It also translates into my writing, as I write about many different topics that interest me, and pull together a multitude of things that I observe on a daily basis. It is my listening skills, I believe, that enable me to deeply understand the needs of the clients that come to me in search of clearer sense of sight through my photography tuition services. It is those same skills that I know will lead to much of my success in the future as a tutor and a creative coach.
Finding your ‘Ikigai' is something that won’t just happen overnight. It takes time, consistency, discipline and dedication. It might also take screwing up a few times along your way. Only those people that have failed many times over will ever know true success.
The Beauty of A Life pursuing Ikigai
The end goal here is to create a way of living that allows you to utilise your skills and gifts in a meaningful way that makes an impact on the world and, ultimately, creates some sort of change along the way. The pursuit of ‘Ikigai’, I believe, is an eternal one, and one that most of us are already doing either consciously or unconsciously.
As humans, we are programmed to constantly evolve, change direction, grow new parts and leave old parts behind. As we age, it is important to find joy, fulfilment, and balance as we seek peace and harmony within ourselves.
To truly know oneself is the ultimate prize in this existence, and to consciously seek ones ‘Ikigai’ is our ultimate mission, I believe. If we can strike the balance between the things that we are good at, the things that we love, and the things that the world needs, whilst being paid enough to earn a living and provide for a family, then it will have been a life well lived.