IKIGAI: A Journey of Living Longer
Wouldn’t it become a pleasure if we could live the way we want? Doing things that we love and getting appreciated for them. We might agree that this is exactly what all people want and what they try to look for in life. Most of us will call it as ikigai.
Ikigai is a term that embodies the idea of happiness in living. It is often associated with a Venn diagram with four overlapping qualities: what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
It seems that ikigai is always related to work. Yes, this is kindly true. However, is it possible for people to feel that they have found the meaning of life by working all the time? The answer of course depends on what job they do. Others may describe it simply as a job that matches their passion then they will be pleased and enjoy doing it.
Since ikigai is a Japanese concept that is widely applied by the people, the idea is might be slightly different. In a book entitled IKIGAI: The Japanese Secret to A Long and Happy Life, Ikigai is more recognised as the happiness of always being busy.
Then what should we do? Does that mean we should work all the time without retiring? Of course it is not that simple. Working is not only about going to the office to do some responsibility. Seeing that basically, everything we do is working. Starting from the moment we wake up in the morning, until we return to sleep at night.
The Japanese believe that apart from consuming healthy foods, staying active even after retiring is also an important key to live a long life. When visiting Okinawa, a prefecture of Japan, there will be lots of adults gardening, embroidering, hanging out with relatives like young people, or exerting their bodies in low-intensity exercise instead of sitting casually with no specific activity.
The Okinawans keep doing what they want to do and what they love for as long as their health allows. They will also do various activities to maintain a healthy and youthful mind, cause they believe, by having a youthful mind will also drives toward a healthy lifestyle that will slow the aging process.
Thus, from the Okinawans we can learn that it is important to discover our own ikigai. The easiest way to find it is by going with the flow. Greet the days with full of excitement and live in the present. They once said that there is no future, no past, but the present. So let’s just stay active until we forget that our age continues to grow to 100 and more.
-Northern Ingo-
