A very interesting lesson stemming from a sophisticated Japanese philosophy that pursues the search for the meaning of life from a professional point of view and beyond; first of all a pragmatic mental attitude to help everyone find their own purpose, their own reason for living, starting from knowing ourselves, understanding what we really love to do and what we can do better than anyone else.
This concept is not unknown in the West since it is treated – similarly but differently – by moral philosophy as the “theory of practice”, i.e. as a reflection, as a speculation on how we must act, on what our actions must be like in order to be fair, with a focus on good, and therefore on what good is, on what law we must follow in order to achieve it and so on. Essentially, the object of Western moral philosophy is not “how beings are” but “how they should be”; it is part of deontology (a discipline that deals with having to be) and it is a special deontology because it is concerned with those things on which we have the power to intervene, that is to say those things that we are capable of making what they should be: our actions.
It is a shame to cover the topic so superficially, but we hope at least to arouse curiosity for further personal insights, since the issue of knowing ourselves is of key importance.
Epictetus (in ancient Greek: Ἐπίκτητος, Epíktētos, “he who has been bought”) said: “No man is free who is not master of himself” and, whether “being masters” refers to the knowledge of ourselves, whether it relates to the “gnosis” revealed by religions, whether it simply concerns the domination and balance of human passions, the question remains: “Do we know ourselves? And how much do we know about ourselves?”
A good answer could be that of St. Augustine of Hippo: “And men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, yet pass over the mystery of themselves without a thought.”
Ikigai is a way of living life a little distant from the vision that we Westerners have, used to talking mainly about objectives to be achieved in a fairly theoretical way, without really thinking about a concrete future but rather about an idea of it. This Japanese term has no real translation into our language; its literal meaning is “reason to get up in the morning”, or something similar to “raison d’être” but any transposition is still restrictive.
It is curious to think how an ancient tradition like this tells us in such a concrete way about the areas that make up our life and how we must take care of them equally on a daily basis; finding one’s Ikigai means getting closer to completeness, i.e. finding one’s “vocation” according to a concept very similar to the one given by writer Jeff Goins in The art of work.
