Ikigai

This article on the Japanese concept of ikigai over at Shondaland should ring a bell for Lichtenbergians: The word means literally “a reason to live,” and it’s simply whatever motivates you in your life. For Lichtenbergians, that’s probably your creative efforts, your writing, your music, your cocktails.

Here’s the key phrase to which I’d like to draw your attention: “[T]here are many, many little things that make your life worthwhile — not necessarily all these grand goals” like writing a novel or composing a symphony or even creating a sanctuary in your back yard (pictured above).

It is very difficult to let go of a “grand goal” as a marker of your happiness, but I think it’s important to do so. Instead, as Ken Mogi, the author profiled in the article, suggests, allow yourself to build your happiness from the little joys: a fire in the fire pit, a simple gin & tonic, watching the sun set — let’s face it, nobody gets up to watch the sun rise — or, as I have suggested elsewhere, washing the dishes or tidying the study.

Here’s why: If I decide, even subconsciously, that finishing Seven Dreams of Falling will be the root cause of my happiness, then I’m pretty sure that I am not going to be happy because have you seen me working on Seven Dreams at all? Not finishing Seven Dreams will cause me to be unhappy, and being miserable is not a very good motivator (despite the old dictum that one writes when the pain of not writing outweighs the pain of writing).

Conversely, if feeding the cat, making supper, building a fire, watching the wind in the trees, greeting the chipmunks — the young ones are intensely curious about me — if any and all of these “little things” are the building blocks of my happiness, then I can work on Seven Dreams in a relatively positive frame of mind.

To quote Mogi again, “[Y]ou can actually achieve great things by starting small and not thinking too much about the bigger picture.” Sounds a lot like our Precept of TASK AVOIDANCE, doesn’t it?

N.B.: I am not working on Seven Dreams. And I am relatively happy with that.