What keeps you from committing suicide? What makes it easy to snap out of depression? makes a man stay awake till late and gets him up from bed with a spring to his steps and earlier than others? What makes work look like pleasure? What makes a man smile through pressure and ride through waves that have the capacity to drown others? What makes it easy for some people to turn pain into power, obstacles into stepping stones?
Let us go on an excursion to a group of islands in Japan. Okinawa. Not a familiar name, right? People from this part of Japan are reputed to have the elusive “elixir of youth”. They have the largest number of people living beyond a hundred years than anywhere on earth. Many of them live independently up to their late nineties, largely free from age-related diseases and hardly needing any form of hospitalization. Some studies have attributed this to their diet. Some have said it is because of their largely rural, agrarian lifestyle, uncorrupted by the vagaries of modern civilization. However, if these were the only reasons, then there would be several parts of the world that should boast of the same or better longevity statistics. Apart from the longevity factor, suicide on the islands is almost non-existent, compared to the other parts of Japan where suicide rates are significantly high. They are known for being exceptionally happy, living contented lives with very strong communal ties that see the concerns of every member of the community as the collective concern of the community.
Shortly after the Second World War, because of the stiff resistance that the people of Okinawa gave to the allied forces, they were totally disarmed and every semblance of arms and ammunition removed from them. Till date, one of the largest American military formations in the Pacific is located there. What did the Okinawa people do? They chose to turn the situation around. Instead of playing victim and defenceless, they came up with the concept of “karate” as a potent form of self-defense using only the hands and the feet and gave it to the rest of the world! The word karate is a combination of two words “kara” which means “empty or free” and “te” which means “hands”. When the suffix “do” (pronounced “daw”) which means “path or way”, you get “karate do” which implies that karate is not just for self-defense but is designed to be a pathway to total well-being. This is a testament to the indomitable spirit of the people of Okinawa and their capacity to turn adversity to advantage.
However, the karate is just a fruit of something much more fundamental to the essence of the Okinawa. What is the secret of the longevity, resilience and the happiness of the Okinawas?
The Okinawa ethos is rooted in a concept known as ikigai. Ikigai is from two words “iki” which means “life” and “gai” which means “value, essence or reason”. “Ikigai” therefore means the reason or essence of living. In contemporary parlance, we call it purpose. According to the concept of “ikigai”, contentment, true happiness, relationship with others, pursuit of work instead of just a job should proceed from a discovery and clear understanding of why we were created and what unique value we were packaged to contribute to the world.
Whether or not the people of Okinawa are conversant with the Bible, I do not know. However, one can say that they have only succeeded in demonstrating the veracity of the scriptures. As much as man has tried so hard, especially in contemporary corporate environments, to edge the divine out of discourse, certain realities and examples of the sacrosanct truths of true godliness continue to manifest in human experiences.
Purpose or “ikigai” is at the root of every human project that will succeed significantly and sustainably! According to the late Myles Munroe, purpose undergirds everything in creation. Nobody finishes fabricating a product and then begins to wonder why he created it. Every product reflects a purpose in the mind of its creator. God created everything with a purpose in mind which He pronounced as soon as He spoke them into being. Where the purpose of a thing is not known, it will inevitably be subject to abuse. Simon Sinek in his books, “Start With Why” and “Find Your Why” makes it clear that no person or project can succeed beyond its WHY. I deal extensively with the subject in my book “Living Intentionally” Purpose answers the question “Why?”. Is what you are doing now what you were wired to do or what you stumbled into? Do you feel happy waking up and going to work every day? Are you on a job or are you at work? A job is what you do to pay bills and put food on your table. You may make a lot of money on a job, yet have no fulfillment and end each day feeling a heavy sense of anger and frustration which soon becomes palpable and evident in your relationship with others, even at family level. Work on the other hand, is what you know you were born to do. When you have found your reason for being, you have found your work. The thing about that is that even if it doesn’t pay you much money, you are happy doing it and it becomes a platform to spread the fragrance of your life to the rest of the world. You go to bed every day happy, knowing that you have touched the world in a significant way. This provides the motivation to get up in the morning, ready to contribute more value, whether or not anyone notices or is willing to pay you. Recognition is never the reason for ikigai, contribution is. Recognition comes as consequence of a well-realized ikigai.
Your ikigai comes when your passion meets your mission and your profession derives from your vocation. Your vocation is your calling, the original message coded in you at creation for your world. If you can choose a profession that helps you to express the calling, you will live an unstoppable life because you wake up daily like a man on a mission and you need no help to remain excited about what you do!
Fulfillment has nothing to do with how long a man lives for. It is about coming to the end of life with a confident smile that one has lived in purpose, for purpose and on purpose!
Until a man finds and embraces his ikigai, he may have all the things that money can buy but he will continually lack the joy that comes from connecting purpose with people in the greater service of God and the rest of creation. The greatest regret in life is not about not having mansions or a fleet of cars or not being able to take holidays on exotic resorts. It is about having all these and finding out at the end that it never brought the desired joy because there was no discovery and pursuit of ikigai.
Have you found yours?
Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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