Hello again lovely email friends. I’m thinking a lot about small steps that can be taken in pursuit of happiness. Perhaps you are too. So that’s a theme that permeates this week.
🆙 The World Is Changing - So Can We: David Byrne considers the current situation and ponders if there’s something we can learn, something that will prepare us better, some different way of being that might make us stronger. Is this an opportunity for us to reimagine what we can be?
❓ Preserving Optionality: Preparing for the Unknown: We’re often advised to excel at one thing. But preserving optionality allows us to pivot when the road ahead crumbles.
🔏 What are we willing to sacrifice to feel safe? The philosopher Thomas Hobbes took the position that freedom is good, but security is better. This animated short video boils down the complex question of freedom vs security to its most essential.
💚 A Rolling List of Green Things to Do During Self-Isolation: Recommended environmental activities including helping climate projects, absorbing some green lifestyle hacks and spending some time reading up on key environmental thinking.
🎤 Roberta Flack: The Virtuoso: Roberta Flack’s career demands a new way of thinking about the word ‘genius.’
📝 I’m Clinging to Personal Writing More Than Ever Right Now: “Give me the internet of 2012 but give it to me in 2020. Give me shower thoughts and off-the-cuff revelations. Give me headlines that don’t give a hoot about SEO. Give me the Wild West of the digital world, when throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what stuck was pretty much the prevailing modus operandi.”
🎵 27 Club: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse and many more musical icons all died at the age of 27. These artists torched a wild path to their early graves and shifted and shaped our culture along the way. 27 Club tells their stories.
Improving life and work with ikigai
Okinawa, a group of islands south of mainland Japan, has among the longest lifespans and highest rates of centenarians in the world. It’s also where the concept of ikigai, an ancient philosophy for finding purpose in life, is especially prominent.
Dating from the Heian period (A.D. 794 to 1185), and drawing together the idea of iki meaning life with gai meaning worth, ikigai has been gaining interest in recent years, driven by an interest in long life.
In 2009, journalist Dan Buettner gave a TED talk on the common characteristics of places where people live longest, such as Okinawa and the Greek island of Ikaria. Broadly, there’s a layering: on top of the things we’d all guess, such as good diet, exercise and social contact, there’s a simple life with few possessions, plenty of time outdoors, staying active and getting enough sleep.
Of all these various ‘blue zones’, Okinawans have the highest life expectancy. Here, ikigai could be thought of as purpose, or meaning. A focus on something bigger than mere material wealth. Ikigai exists at the intersection of four strands: what you’re good at, what you’re passionate about, what what you can get paid for, and what the world needs. Discovering it for yourself is said to bring fulfilment, happiness and longer life.
What draws me to the ikigai concept is not the promise of longevity but rather its practicality. Starting small encourages us to invest care. Letting go grants us release from obsessions and see the world more positively. Maintaining community offers strong support. Finding joy in small things allows us to find motivation everywhere. And being present in the moment focusses us our actions and state of mind. All of these are practical actions we can use to improve our work and life.