Knowing your essence and your reward

 

 

THEN Pharaoh said to his brothers, “What is your occupation?”

And they said to Pharaoh, “Your servants are shepherds, both we and also our fathers.” – Genesis 47:3

The Okinawa tribe in Japan has a reputation for unusual longevity. A community of very happy people with an uncommon sense of communality, it is not strange to find a 95-year-old Okinawan still going to his farm daily. And even though they eat healthily, their longevity is not primarily because of their diet. Their core is a shared understanding that the collective is superior to the individual and no one exists for himself. They live like a real community of interdependent people because their lifestyle is anchored on the premise of selfless service to others. What concerns one concerns the collective. No one has a sense of entitlement beyond their reward for what they do. They are not rich. But they are very happy and content. The uniqueness of their lifestyle and communal outlooks have attracted attention from researchers and business moguls all over the world.

Their secret? IKKAI. Ikigai is a combination of two Japanese words, “iki,” which means “life” and “gai” which means “reason.” Their core drive, their daily ambition imbues them with a sense of mission that is linked to their existence which steers through meaningful and significant contribution. So the perpetuity of joy you see in the face and heart of the Okinawan old person is flowing from the awareness of a deep-seated sense of mission. Okinawa, the world’s home to the largest population of 95+ humans who are also the most active and joyful, is a good example of what purpose does to the human soul.

A person gives meaning to existence. Purpose justifies content. Purpose gives reward to existence. Purpose burns out the plague of comparison.

If a lion gets hungry and goes after a pig, if it can capture it, will it call it a pet? If it cannot hunt or roar, can we call it a lion? Why then envy mosquito for a spotlight it doesn’t have? The big question is, “Is a lion because it hunts or it hunts because it is a lion?” Figure it out.

God never made the pig. He didn’t attach a purpose to it. Neither does any serious creator. We aren’t God made but God meant. In deep, we have value too. Lions aren’t carnivores because they are wicked, but because animal population in the ecosystem must be regulated.

Ikigai is not what we chose. Ikigai chose us.

Your purpose is not your making. It is your discovery as well as your path to recovery from despair.

Irrespective of how old you are, life only begins when you make that discovery. Your purpose is your ASSIGNMENT, the revealer of your contribution to creation.

Your purpose is the parameter for your ASSESSMENT. Government, parents, friends, society, education, a great job, may enhance your discovery, but none can find it for you. The discovery is along a lonely path you must travel, into the labyrinths of your Creator’s heart.

In the words of Albert Einstein, “every man is a genius. But when you assess a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it spends its entire life believing it was stupid.”

Your ikigai is the tool that heaven has given you to fix the knotty issues of life. Experiences when probed, the good, the ugly, only make sense when unscrambled with that toolkit of purpose.

If your ikigai is God’s mechanism for life’s agenda, if there is a barrier of indifference prevalent, it is your ASSIGNMENT.

Your assignment is your platform for demonstrating character. Your work signature is your worth. If it is corrupt, the assignment is like a failed project.

Your purpose is your seed and your ikigai. It is your RESPONSE to your kind assignment to your world! It is the “vocation”, “calling” and “work” (which should not all mean the same thing but do!) you are created to do. That is what we mean when we say, “purpose”. Without it, life has no value and work is mere toil.

No one is born poor. Many are ignorant of wealth. No one is born useless. We are only unconscious of value.

I have heard and seen many times if some people were created blind by some poor god or power. I used to think we are just unfortunate but probably was born poor. Most of us don’t just know the content of our “wealth” or we define wealth by parameters other than the Maker’s original intention.

How about your scriptings like “the poor you will have amongst you?” Or, “labour not to be rich” or “the poor and the rich meet together, the Lord is Maker of them both”?

These and many other scriptures have locked many into the self-limiting plague of poverty and lack.

God created abundance before He created Man. Man met lack no one created when he was created. His problem with lack started when Eve focused on what the adversary told her was lacking. That is the origin of poverty and lack in this life (the other three “curses” are disconnected). The power of curse because what you focus on keeps growing.

Purpose is discovered, developed, properly connected and deployed. Purpose is your solution to irrelevance.

The way to be broke is the pursuit of cash. But none of us has a money problem. What we have is a knowledge and vision problem. The man who has more vision is more wealthy than a man who can earn per minute, no matter the population. Purpose is richer than power. If the rich man’s self-worth is in property, the man who believes he is wealthy because he is fulfilled has no need of what the rich man still chases.

If you have a dream, the problem is not that we can never have money, the problem is we keep following money instead of following purpose.

Money and cash are not synonyms. Anything that can be traded for its value – in a required form – is currency. Do not limit it to “Naira”. You are not how much you make. Your worth is defined by how much impact you create and whose burden you lift. If no one will miss you tomorrow, you are not valuable today.

Ikigai is how you discover you. You can never know you except you know the God who created you. Purpose is never what we are told but what we are born to be. It is not inherited, copied, taught or transferred. It’s you found in Him!

You can be poor and still not lack resources. But if resources are absent and you know your purpose, your generation will need you. Your purpose is God-inspired, God-breathed and God-ordained. You are a needed, valued solution you must never bury. Your time is now.

There is a wealth of purpose in you. You can never be described as poor. Your wealth is packaged in your value code. One man’s problem is another man’s harvest field.

Instead of constant complaining about “how tough things are”, what is the problem you are currently solving for anybody that should warrant a significant reward? There lies your fortune.

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!