Ikigai

The word joins iki (生き), "living," with gai (甲斐), "worth" or "value." Literally, it means "the worth of living." In everyday Japanese, it is a modest and concrete word, not a grand or mystical one. A person might say their grandchildren are their ikigai, or their vegetable patch, or their weekly baseball game. The word means "what makes life feel good and meaningful day to day." It does not mean one great life mission. It has nothing to do with money, success or destiny.

In the West, most people know ikigai from a Venn diagram with four circles. The circles stand for what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs and what someone will pay you for. The ikigai sits where all four overlap. It is a catchy picture, but it is mostly a Western invention. A blogger took an older diagram about purpose and simply renamed it. The idea of a sweet spot with a salary is not what the Japanese word means. Japanese writers, such as the scientist Ken Mogi, describe ikigai in a different way. For them it comes from small daily pleasures, from losing yourself in what you do and from a sense of harmony with others. The word also comes up in talks about Okinawa, home to some of the longest-living people in the world. There, an ikigai helps older people stay active and involved.