"What are your reasons for living? What gets you going in the morning? What is your purpose in life? These are tough questions about which philosophers, novelists, and now increasingly scientists have been working for literally millennia.
There is a single Japanese word that encapsulates all such questions: ikigai. According to the Oxford English Dictionary ikigai is "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living."
So a very good, and deceptively simple question is: what's your ikigai?"
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https://open.substack.com/pub/figsinwinter/p/whats-your-ikigai?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Section 10
ReplyDeleteRacheal Clark
What is your ikigai? Well, in short, it is all the people and animals I love. The morning sunset with the slight breeze keeps me going and so does wet grass. Going to work and getting promoted, the chance to learn new things, gets me out of bed in the morning. Although, I may have many tasks, it's the little things that keep me going.
What is my ikigai? My reason for being. Well having a reason or purpose for being alive implies that there is a grand scheme or plan that outlines how our lives unfold. I can not, nor can anyone, definitively say that there is or is not a grand plan that constitutes our universe. I do not completely discount the concept of a grand plan, but that does not occupy my rational for my foremost thinking. Therefore I live to observe the universe unfold in all of its facets' and attempt to move from each day in a manner that improves my mind, body, and socioeconomic position; to be able to provide for myself and maintain the resources needed for the later.
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