A strong reason to live…
A strong reason to live, involves having a purpose or something worthwhile to do….
Are you living life with a certain purpose and cannot wait to get to it every day
Or are you simply doing things to pass time and because you are alive and you just do things to fill the time.
To find their way, many people turn to Ikigai
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ikigai as “a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living”. More generally it may refer to something that brings pleasure or fulfilment.
The term compounds two Japanese words: iki (生き, meaning ‘life; alive’) and kai (甲斐, meaning ‘(an) effect; (a) result; (a) fruit; (a) worth; (a) use; (a) benefit; (no, little) avail’) (sequentially voiced as gai), to arrive at ‘a reason for living [being alive]; a meaning for [to] life; what [something that] makes life worth living; a ‘raison d’être’.
Ikigai can describe having a sense of purpose in life, and as being motivated.[4] According to a study by Michiko Kumano, feeling ikigai as described in Japanese usually means the feeling of accomplishment and fulfilment that follows when people pursue their passions.
It is the same as the French raison d’être (literally “reason to be”) and Joie de vivre – to express a cheerful enjoyment of life, an exultation of spirit, and general happiness.
Activities that generate the feeling of ikigai are not forced on an individual; they are perceived as being spontaneous and undertaken willingly, and thus are personal and depend on a person’s inner self.[6]
According to psychologist Katsuya Inoue, ikigai is a concept consisting of two aspects: “sources or objects that bring value or meaning to life” and “a feeling that one’s life has value or meaning because of the existence of its source or object”.
Inoue classifies ikigai into three directions – social ikigai, non-social ikigai, and anti-social ikigai – from
An asocial ikigai is an ikigai that is not directly related to society, such as faith or self-discipline. Anti-social ikigai refers to ikigai, which is the basic motivation for living through dark emotions, such as the desire to hate someone or something or to continue having a desire for revenge
Forget purpose…
Finding your so-called purpose is a struggle almost everyone goes through…
According to Mark Manson, part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself.
The idea that we were each born for some higher purpose and it’s now our cosmic mission to find it. This is the same kind of shitty logic used to justify things like spirit crystals or that your lucky number is 34 (but only on Tuesdays or during full moons).
Here’s the truth.
We exist on this earth for some undetermined period of time. During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. And those important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The unimportant ones basically just kill time.
So when people say, “What should I do with my life?” or “What is my life purpose?” what they’re actually asking is: “What can I do with my time that is important?”
This is an infinitely better question to ask. It’s far more manageable and it doesn’t have all of the ridiculous baggage that the “life purpose” question does
So … what can you do with our time that is important to you, your family and the world…. ?
What is your legacy going to be? What are the stories people are going to tell when you’re gone?
What is your obituary going to say? Is there anything to say at all? If not, what would you like it to say? How can you start working towards that today?
Discovering one’s “purpose” in life essentially boils down to finding those one or two things that are bigger than yourself, and bigger than those around you.
It’s not about some great achievement, but merely finding a way to spend your limited amount of time well.
And to do that you must get off your couch and act, and take the time to think beyond yourself, to think greater than yourself, and paradoxically, to imagine a world without yourself – where you left a legacy so people can remember you.
Feeling that you have worthy projects to fulfil in life may help you live longer, no matter what your age
According to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The research has clear implications for promoting positive ageing and adult development, says lead researcher Patrick Hill of Carleton University in Canada:
“Our findings point to the fact that finding a direction for life, and setting overarching goals for what you want to achieve can help you actually live longer, regardless of when you find your purpose,” says Hill. “So the earlier someone comes to a direction for life, the earlier these protective effects may be able to occur.”
So your life has no single purpose, but many
Viktor Frankl wrote about how one can find purpose and meaning in life, even amongst the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp. This is a complex topic, but whether life has “meaning” is a philosophical question – a person’s life never has one single purpose; it has many.
It is important to bear in mind that life isn’t a movie in which we star, heading toward a hopefully successful conclusion. We don’t have a specific mission in life that we need to accomplish.
A good life needs to be lived in the reality of our day by day, not as an abstract or transcendental idea. It is the daily purpose that is important, even if this is informed by an overarching set of values and ambitions.
This daily purpose is a combination of apparently mundane routines that have value in themselves.
We are all hungry for meaning, for purpose, for the feeling that our life is worth more than the sum of its parts.
Luckily, humans are resourceful – we have infinite ways of finding meaning, and infinite potential sources of meaning. We can find meaning in every scenario, every event, every occurrence, every context.
We can find meaning in the sublime, in the absurd, in the dull and dreary, and in the perfectly wretched in life.