What Is Your Ikigai?

Don't know? Invest your time to discover it.

Dear Circle,

One thing I know to be true is that we are here to give expression to a unique piece of ourselves. It is in our DNA to create. Not only do we procreate for survival, but as we investigate our surroundings, beyond pure unadulterated nature, much of everything else around us, we have envisioned and brought to life.

Why are we instinctually built to build? To create? To express ourselves outwardly in this way?

By sharing a deeply authentic, passionate and insightful piece of ourselves, in service to another and the greater good, we derive vital purpose.

Purpose is being critically thought about and discussed in many public health spheres and beyond at the moment. Deaths of despair from depression, opioid abuse and suicide that are currently riddling our nation and the abyss we now find in America amongst men, especially poorly educated white men, and our children, especially a subset of our teenage girls, are due to many factors that ultimately trace back to a lack of purposeful agency in our lives. Too many of us have traded deliberately living for something for living for not much of anything by way of constant distraction. Just a perpetual stream of swiping day-in and day-out. Swiping dating, shopping, social media, news, and entertainment apps.

In Okinawa, longevity is considerably longer than many other countries, with Okinawans living on average 7 years longer than Americans and being the group with the most people over 100 years old. The reason is that the Okinawan people have an ikigai, a reason to get up in the morning.

In Neil Pasticha’s book The Happiness Equation, he tells us about “a 102 year-old karate master whose ikigai is to carry forth his martial art, a 100 year-old fisherman whose ikigai is to feed his family, a 100 year-old woman whose ikigai is to hold her great-great-great granddaughter.”

Our reason to wake up each morning can take shape in an infinite number of ways and can change over the course of our lifetime. It can be found at the intersection where our passions and talents converge with the things that the world needs and, if pursuing for our career, is willing to pay for.

The secret is to act. And with that action comes purpose — a reason to get out of bed in the morning and build.

For me it is to share the wisdom I have acquired through my own journey as well as the wisdom I have learned from others’ past and present. I do this predominantly through mothering and writing.

What brings you to life? What is your purpose? Your ikigai? Please share in the comments. And if you are not certain, start giving it some real thought. For your health and happiness depend on it.

With love,

Whitney