The Japanese have a word for happiness. They call it ikigai. Ikigai broadly means what brings you joy and meaning to life. The word originated during the Heian period (794-1185), considered to be Japan’s golden age of culture. Among other things, this period saw the development of the kana script, the cultivation of waka poetry and other distinctive literary forms such as the narrative prose.

The concept of Ikigai was largely unknown to the West until very recently, thanks to the 2016 bestseller, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. Their book awakened more people to the idea that happiness is not necessarily found in material wealth, but in the small acts of ordinary life. Helpfully, the book includes a guide to how one can find ikigai, in the form of a Venn diagram consisting of overlapping concentric circles (see figure). Ikigai is at the center of those overlapping circles. It is the sweet spot where you are happy because you are doing (a) what you love, (b) what you are good at, (c) what the world needs, and (d) what you can be paid for.

Work takes up most of our day. So it helps if we can find ikigai in the work that we do. I am fortunate to have experienced that for most of my working life. For over thirty years, I was a university professor until my retirement in 2018. I loved what I did, which was to teach and do original research, and I was reasonably proficient in doing both tasks.

I like to joke with my friends that this is a job that pays me to dream. I dreamt a lot, as all academics must in order to come up with creative research ideas. I can’t think of many jobs that can provide as much ikigai as a university professor. It’s as close to a dream job as one can get. 

Not everyone is blessed to have a job like that. How then to achieve a fulfilling life filled with joy and meaning? I don’t have a grand answer to this question although I believe that anyone can find ikigai in work, hobbies and time spent with family or friends, and I believe that there are experiential gems hidden even in the most ordinary acts of daily living. “The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand,” says Annie Dillard in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She also ask pointedly, “but who gets excited by a mere penny?”

To spark joy in whatever one does, according to the American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one needs to be in a state of “flow”, meaning we must be so fully engrossed in an activity that we lose track of time and self. You can read more about flow in his 1990 bestseller, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Meanwhile, I will give a few concrete examples to illustrate how flow may be experienced.

Consider work. Wouldn’t it be a waste of our one and only precious life to devote so much time to this activity and not find flow? The big question is how. Again, I have no grand answers to this important question. Some types of work are intrinsically rich in flow experiences but many are not. Still, we must try to juice as much flow from what we do. If a piece of work gets too challenging, we can wring our hands and yell, or we can adopt a “can-do” spirit and view the challenge as an opportunity to be creative in finding a solution. Similarly, when you have to deal with difficult people at work, you can achieve flow by framing it as a test of your people skill instead of wallowing in bitterness and resentment. Like most things in life, having a positive mindset is an asset.

There are also plenty of flow moments outside of work. Hobbies are a fertile source of flow and ikigai, especially if your hobby leads you to acquire a skill you never thought you had. I can share my personal experience on this score. I love art, am intrigued by how artists conceptualize and execute a painting or a sculpture but never regard myself to have the ability to make art until one fine day when I did a makeover of my apartment and saw that the walls were blank and sad-looking. That was when I decided to take the plunge and make some art. Now my walls are adorned with art and they look sunnier. Here’s a sample of art works I did to make that happen (don’t laugh).

I made this odd-looking sculpture using “found materials”, i.e., stuff lying around the house that were unused: a metal bookend, a black wooden display stand, a yellow exercise ball, and a silver decorative ball. The whole thing looks precarious, like life is precarious, but that’s the point.

The next piece I did was this painting of a lily pond in semi-abstract style.

I made a mistake at the very start of making this picture (I won’t tell you where). But I kept on painting and finished the work in roughly an hour. During that whole time, I was truly in a state of flow as I began to see how the other shapes and colors came into form, eventually masking the mistake at the beginning. This work now rests atop a white display stand in my living room. I am extremely pleased with it.

The last artwork I like to share with you is this abstract yellow painting.

I have a confession to make with regards to this work. It is a copy of “Lights of Sight” by the Cuban-American artist, Carmen Herrera which is in the Whitney Museum of American Art. I love Herrera’s work for its purity of composition but her work was done with painted acrylic on wood and I didn’t know how to paint acrylic with such vivid colors. So I went shopping for alternative materials. Almost by accident, I found in an art shop plastic corrugated boards in exactly the same color as Herrera’s masterpiece. Moreover, these boards were lightweight and easy to cut with a strong pen-knife. I remember the excitement of this discovery, bought the boards home and immediately set to work, though I felt unsure if I could replicate the original. I surprised myself; I finished my version of Lines of Sight in less than half an hour and immediately hung it in my bed room. That room has never looked more cheerful.

These were some of my ikigai experiences. Doing the artworks taught me to let go of my apprehensions, and just enjoy the state of flow of making art. I still do not consider myself an artist, but I’m glad I had my ikigai moment trying to be one.

Other than work and hobbies, don’t overlook mundane activities as a source of ikigai. Things like cooking, cleaning the house, walking the dog or exercising can be transformed into ikigai moments if we view these activities as life enhancing rather than mere chores. Again to share my own experience, some of poems I wrote and publish were conceived during my evening brisk walks around the neighborhood. There’s something about walking that helps unclutter the mind, bringing fresh perspectives on everything. Finally, we may also experience ikigai when do “what the world needs” like volunteering for a good cause and when we share precious moments with family and friends.

So lean back and let the ordinary activities of life be the source of your ikigai. It doesn’t matter what the activity is. If what you do brims with meaning, if you become so engrossed in it that everything falls away and you emerge hours later because your stomach growls or the light grows dim, you have had your ikigai moment. The sum of such moments is the measure of a happy and meaningful life.