Ikigai – You Don’t Have to Have Only One True Purpose

I picked up a book from the library recently called “Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life” by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles.

The copyright date is 2016, which makes it almost a decade old. However, I wish it had been published much earlier, like the late 1980s or early 1990s. You see, it was during that period that I read all kinds of self-help books trying to divine my purpose in life.

I’m not one of those people who know exactly what they want to do with their life from childhood. I’ve since discovered that those people are pretty rare, but I didn’t feel that way as a young adult. I thought lots of people had things all figured out, but not me.

The self-help books of the 1980s and 1990s weren’t helpful in this respect. The overall feeling I took from them was very RAH-RAH, go out and TACKLE the world. And if you couldn’t figure out your purpose, there was something wrong with you.

After reading such books for years, I finally realized most of them made me feel bad about myself and I gave them up. Self-help, meh. More like they helped the authors to make money on readers’ desire for direction.

As the years passed, I’ve discovered self-help books have gotten kinder and gentler in delivering their advice. “Ikigai” is just such a book. It encourages you to take certain actions toward living a happier life, but it doesn’t browbeat you into doing so.

In Chapter Three: From Logotherapy to Ikigai: How to live longer and better by finding your purpose, the authors talk a lot about Viktor Frankl, a psychologist who survived the Holocaust and wrote “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Logotherapy was his method of helping people discover their purpose for living.

The chapter references a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche mentioned in Frankl’s book: “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.” (pg. 40)

Frankl’s why for surviving the Auschwitz concentration camp was to rewrite and publish the manuscript based on his career research after his manuscript was confiscated at the camp.

One of the key points made in this chapter of “Ikigai” is that “We each have a unique reason for being, which can be adjusted or transformed many times over the years.” (pg. 42)

Shazam! This was the advice I needed when I was in my twenties! There was no need to find one true purpose to my life. I could have several and they could change over time.

In the next chapter of “Ikigai,” the authors discussed psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on the concept of flow, that state of being that makes you lose all sense of time when involved in an activity you enjoy. By paying attention to activities that put you into flow, you can discover your purpose(s).

As an artist and writer, I’m familiar with the state of flow and have Csikszentmihalyi’s book “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” on my bookshelf next to my art-related books. (In checking the copyright date, it was published in 1996, so I need to correct my broad assessment of self-help books from this era. Some of them were actually helpful!)

These two simple pieces of information – that you needn’t have only one true purpose for your entire life and that you can discover your purposes through paying attention to what puts you in a state of flow – would have alleviated a lot of the anxiety I felt as a young adult.

Heck, they can help people at any age if they’ve gotten nudged off the path of purpose.