I stumbled upon these lines
as I flipped through the pages of a Japanese book named, 'Ikigai'. Intrigued, I
bought it and devoured the book in one shot, for it was riveting and brimful of
insights we rarely come across.
'Ikigai' is a Japanese term
which means - 'A reason to jump out of bed each morning'. We all are born with
our personal 'ikigai' - a meaningful purpose which, literally, doesn't let us
sleep, and drive us towards a passionate life. Deep within, we have an
inexhaustible longing to achieve 'something'. The trouble is: most of us are
not aware of that 'something', and wander off aimlessly from one pursuit to
another with a depressing sense of hollowness inside us that tells us, 'This is
not what I really want to do'.
The truth is: no matter how
lost we are, we can always find our personal 'ikigai' that allow us to lose all
our sense of time. Confused? Let me expound it by an example:
Have you ever seen a sculptor
in the process of sculpting out statues? The sculptor, while working, is so
immersed in carving minute details on the statues that he becomes quite
oblivious to his surroundings, his thoughts and emotions are completely in the
'now', in the 'present' moment. Nothing else matters to him other than the
undivided attention he gives to the project at hand.
In other words, the sculptor
is in 'flow'. And so are other artists and professionals - writers, singers,
dancers, actors, chefs, etc - who are aware of their personal 'ikigai'. They
know what makes them 'flow' and what makes all their sense of time vanish. They
enjoy the process so profoundly that time simply cease to exist for them,
instilling in them a deep sense of contentment. They do what they love for
hours at a stretch and yet they don't feel that much time has passed. Albert
Einstein cleverly captured the essence of flow when he said, 'When you sit with
a nice girl for two hours you think it's only a minute, but when you sit on a
hot stove for a minute you think it is two hours. That's relativity.'
Just think is there any
activity you have done in the past, maybe in your childhood or teen years, that
you thoroughly enjoyed? The process of 'doing' that activity must have thrown
you in an incredibly immersive experience that gave you a rush of happiness you
could seldom experience. Your personal 'ikigai' is hidden in that activity that
caused you to 'flow'. Once you have identified your 'ikigai', you can surely
figure out how well you can use that 'ikigai', that 'purpose' to bring out the
best in you.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to create a course?
