Ikigai

What do the activities that drive you to flow have in common? Why do these activities drive you to flow? Are they activities you like to do alone or with other people? Do you flow more when doing things with your body or just to think?  
- from p.86 "Ikigai. The Japanese secret to a long and happy life" - Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

The flow described in this book looks a lot like a scene from the movie "Soul". There's a space in time where people are depicted going into a state of flow when doing something they love, which is commonly misunderstood as the purpose of their own lives. In the scene the soul of the human goes into a trancelike state and thus becoming one with their flow, disconnected from their present and body, fully connected to their being, floating in the Now.
The main character here is certain that their purpose in life was to play the piano and become a successful musician. The movie goes on to tell the story of enjoying life, whether it has a purpose and funnily enough, covers almost all the 10 rules of ikigai. 

When I first saw this movie then I dwelled on what made me feel like that. I could count up a lot of things: painting, dancing, writing, reading, loving, listening, talking - even now pinning it down to one thing is hard. Thankfully you don't have to have one ikigai or one thing in life that brings you joy. It's normal to have many things that remove our perception of time and make us feel more present within ourselves, however it is good to find an ikigai that serves you in your daily life and takes you into the flow whenever you practice it. 

My list of ikigais seems to revolve around creating and community. Which comes as no surprise haha. 
I've had hours pass as I paint, write, read. I've always floated away when I dance, listen to music, spend time with friends and am listening to their stories. I'm mesmerized by the human experience and everything that drips from it, and all that we can create. 

• Lets take writing. I've always been taken by languages and literature. I'm in awe of the amount of words we have in the world, which we use to express our emotions, the words we choose in certain texts or moments, the way words can affect a reader, the realizations that can occur, the seeds of thought that can be planted, the inspiration and motivation that can ensue from a single sentence; I love writing, I love reading, I love thinking and then writing about what I've read and then figured out from it. This is my favorite ikigai, words of expression.

A way to follow my ikigai is to keep writing and reading and thinking (lol). I see having to give myself more time for these things on a daily occurrence. Less scrolling and trying to figure out the future, more taking time for these things, allowing my mind to absorb, process, express. 

• Another ikigai I have and have always wanted to pursue further is painting. This one I see as a challenge, even whilst sitting in the middle of a bunch of my own paintings that look, well, beautiful and sensational. When I paint... I fall into my painting. Choosing the right brush, testing out different colors, having things go different to what I planned and making it turn out as if it was, the colors, the shapes, the materials - I can paint with anything. I don't even need brushes, I enjoy using my hands and random towels and objects that are not aimed to smear paint around a canvas; but I do anyway, because why not really.

When it comes to painting then I love breaking out of the mold of what is perceived as the normal process of painting that we're most familiar with from school art classes, or in my case also from art school, where I didn't stick around for long. I'm in my ikigai with painting when I'm surrounded by tons of colors, materials, music - basically a certain type of chaos is where my creative mind feels most at ease because I can pick anything and do anything, create anything with anything, it's just so freeing.

• The last ikigai I'll touch on today is something I'm just getting to know better for myself. It's something that surrounds us as humans all the time but often not appreciated enough. This also can get twisted up in trauma and anxiety, making it hard to pursue. Community. 

Finding "my people" has been an adventure. I come from a broken family model where there were no pancake Sundays, over loving grandparents, sober role models, happy or healthy people. The community my life started out in was discouraging, to say the least. As long as I can remember I've tried to fit in and find a social group where I felt accepted, nurtured, heard, supported. The place of trauma these wants originated from were fueled by despair and sacrifices that eventually made me run away from the community that was surrounding me, because it wasn't my true community.
I've since been on a journey - traveled the world, volunteered, worked with all types of people, struck up conversations about the most random things and allowed myself to become true to my Being. Through this I've also found my community, my social circle, my people; and to realize through this that I had been denying myself this ikigai due to fear for almost my whole life. Yet whenever I was teaching, sharing, listening, mentoring - I was in a flow. I am in a flow when doing these things and subconsciously I've also pursued this, ending up working in this field, in my ikigai, every day! I really do love my job, even if its in the matrix. 

I mention the human experience a lot. I choose these words because that's how I see life. I see that I am, you are, we are, humans who are experiencing something because we are alive and aware of it.
What we experience isn't inherently bad or good, it's a journey of obstacles and clear roads. Imagine a life that was just happy - would get boring pretty fast. Imagine a life that's just sad - you wouldn't want to live at all. The rotation of events within our daily experiences are what makes life so desirable, why we wake up in the morning. If we experience something negative then the human design is to want to experience an event that balances that, even if the something negative was an insult and the something positive was winning a small amount through a lottery ticket. In the human experience these things are fun, these events can make us go "well, they said something negative to me but I just won some money, i'll go buy something nice for myself". It's amazing. I'd feel balanced out pretty fast. The journey we're on isn't filled with boulders or clear asphalt - the obstacles can be a pebble in your shoe, a small bump in the road, the road changing from dirt to gravel. The same for blessings, our journey can be helped along by a butterfly passing at the right time, knowing when to take a break, a stranger giving a compliment. These ups and downs in our path can and should vary in size and effect because again, that's what makes it fun, that's what makes the human experience worth experiencing. 

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The human mind and Being is very complex on its own and that's a text for another time; but the human experience is simple - it's happenings.
What we do with these happenings is a reflection of our inner world, and that's where we can start seeing complexity and challenges. That's where the trauma and anxiety source from. A lacking of a healthy community around us can stop us from starting to develop a healthier sense of self, to feel better, to be more present, to love fearlessly, to flow with the things that make this human experience worth it for us. We deserve to feel these feelings and can with some patience and acceptance. Towards ourselves, towards the people around us. 

As its said "Live and let live". 

xx