Ikigai – Find your flow or not…

A book review of 'Ikigai - The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life'

This book has featured on many of the ‘Must-Read’ lists and hence it was with great expectations that I took it up. And how do I feel after the read? Mixed emotions are what I would say. Let me elaborate…

The book starts of introducing the concept of Ikigai (the best interpretation of which would be the illustration on the cover – attached above) and in parallel, talks of living long. Both these concepts are built back and forth through numerous examples. For living long, it quotes the importance of an active body and mind, avoiding too much of stress and importance of adequate sleep. For Ikigai, it starts off with logotherapy, Morita therapy and Naikan meditation – the first one focuses on finding your purpose, while the second one is more about accepting the reality and the third one explores introspective meditation. The message is clearly that you hold the answers to overcome your issues.

Thereafter we plunge into ‘flow’ – understanding the state of flow, finding the activity that you identify with, and some tips on how to get there (avoid multitasking, removing distractions, creating environments for different activities etc.) I was a bit lost here whether I was reading a casual blog or a work of research as the book started listing down some quick hacks (like go to a café without wifi, do not look at your mobile devices right after waking up). While these points are all valid, the tone of writing significantly shifts. We then get back to Japan with the takumi. Personally speaking, this was the most engaging part of the whole book for me. The narration of the passion, dedication and perfectionism the takumis show, be it making brushes, creating manga was the best conviction on why one should find their Ikigai. The authors do make an interesting point that flow is not only achieved in one activity for an individual. In fact, we have to try to find microflows in the mundane activities too. Point to make Bill Gates enjoys doing dishes every night. The process is more important than the result. Hence also why all major religions have rituals. Repetition is essential to find the flow. One may have to practice a certain process a minimum number of times before one finds the flow in it.

So now convinced of the state of Ikigai, let’s get to understand the secrets of the longest living people on Earth. If you were looking for people who had great achievements through practicing their Ikigai, you’re left confused. The most common theme is the contentedness of the folks, content with what they have and not stressing too much. Thereafter perhaps the key factor is their diet. And maybe after all that, Ikigai.

After hearing from the oldest people in the world, we now come to Okinawans. Though it reveals nothing dramatic from an ikigai point of view (in fact, they claim that it is OK even if you don’t find your ikigai), it is still quite interesting how the community live in their content ecosystem. Their daily routines – waking up early, gardening, socializing, contributing to the community, though not groundbreaking in itself is a great example of how a community can find happiness within itself.

Next we explore their food habits. Key highlights for me were the amount of anti-oxidants in their diet (green tea/ jasmine tea, tofu, nori seaweed, shikuwasa - a citrus fruit grown locally), hara hachi bu (eating only to 80% of your fill), a wide variety of nutritious and colourful food (didn’t realize the colour of fruits and vegetables meant nutritional variety).

The eighth chapter was my least favourite. To convey that moderate movements (that connect the mind and the body) are beneficial for a longer life, the authors list down numerous moderately engaging physical activities covering yoga, tai chi, qigong and shiatsu. While it would have been adequately sufficient to explain about each of the practices in brief, it delves into shoddy physical illustrations with very rudimentary instructions that leaves you wondering – did the authors put all this into add more pages to get to two hundred.

So once we’ve turned over the pages of the eighth chapter (rather hastily), we’re almost coming to the end of the book, and to be honest, we want to get it done with. But no, the authors are resilient to hold us back with a chapter on resilience (and wabi-sabi). We get a last touch of philosophy with stoicism and buddhism, which conveys that one has to be in control of one’s pleasures, emotions and desires. It’s not the situation, it’s how you react to it that matters. Everything in life is by nature, impermanent and we have to accept it and face it. Wabi-sabi was an interesting concept that the Japanese accept the sense of imperfection in nature of the world – hence why they prefer to build houses of wood rather than stone like the west, so that after some time it could be rebuilt. I had some personal thoughts on the topic. First of all, from a mindset point of view, I began to appreciate the Japanese who have constantly been rebuilding their communities – one catastrophe after the other without any complaint. Most of us, just complain and lament when a calamity strikes. Secondly, it made practical sense that processes don’t get complete one time but keeps repeating like our skin, grow-die-grow again. Whereas when we do something, we just want to do it once and be done with it, though it doesn’t work like that practically. How much ever great the car, you need to keep doing maintenance. From an economic point of view, this made an interesting case for sustained employment. The example of Great Shrine of Ise, which has been rebuilt every twenty years for centuries was a testament to this point. The final point is the notion of ‘Antifragility’, which emphasizes to build yourself in such a manner that you become stronger with every adversity like the mythical creature ‘hydra’.

So what’s the final take? The book does a great job in introducing many interesting concepts rather concisely – some mystical, some scientific. It has definitely given me two books that I want to get my teeth into – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and Nicolas Taleb’s Antifragile. While there was the general awe that I had of the Japanese culture, this book has taken that to a whole new level – their philosophy, their language, their culture. I can’t wait to visit Japan to get a first-hand experience. Till then, I’ll try to do the next best thing possible – interact with some of my Japanese colleagues.

Above is an illustration of how engaged I was through the length of the book. The lows and highs of engagement is somehow correlated to the varied moods of discussions that we experience along the book – deep scientific descriptions (like impact of enzymes on the body), mystical philosophies of the east, some quick of-the-internet hacks. I am postulating that this is because we have two very diverse individuals writing this book together, but then I could be wrong.

To conclude, I would recommend a one-time read for the exposure to the topics. Though, I would have enjoyed more had the authors stuck to the what was the most enticing - the Japanese lifestyle and philosophies.