muriel nissen | churning around in the dregs

 

ikigai / not ikigai

 

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Often referred to as the ikigai diagram, the ikigai chart or the ikigai symbol, the Venn diagram above is not the ikigai concept. What you are looking at is the Purpose Venn Diagram. The framework does not accurately represent the concept of ikigai. Japanese don’t follow this framework, nor contemplate the four questions when they think about their Ikigai.

Ikigai Westernised

• Are you doing something that you love?
• That the world needs?
• That you are good at?
• And that you can be paid for?

The misconception being perpetuated is that one can only achieve ikigai and true happiness by meeting all four conditions, so if you are doing something you love, but it isn't generating you money, then you haven't achieved ikigai - this is false. If you were to show this Venn diagram to a native Japanese, they would not recognise it as ikigai.

Your Ikigai:

• isn't something you need to make money from
• doesn't have to be something that the world needs
• isn't something that you have to be highly skilled or proficient at
• isn't something you have to necessarily love

Japanese use the word casually in conversation and understand its meaning and nuances, but don’t make it up to be a grandeur concept of any sort. You could call the Venn diagram a Westernised version of ikigai, but the truth is, it is a misrepresentation of ikigai. Your ikigai does not lie at the center of those interconnecting circles.

The Zuzunaga Venn Diagram of Purpose

Full credit for the Venn diagram of Purpose should go to Spanish author and psychological astrologer Andres Zuzunaga, who created it in 2011. It first publicly appeared in the book Qué Harías Si No Tuvieras Miedo (What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?) by Borja Vilaseca in 2012. The diagram was translated into English and then started being used by HR managers and life coaches as a simplistic overview to finding purpose in your career. It is now used to help people create a more balanced work situation. Personally, I actually think it makes a very accurate visual representation of entrepreneurship. If this framework inspires you, motivates you, gives you a sense of purpose and makes you want to get out of the bed in the morning, then keep using it. Just remember, that it's not an honest representation of ikigai.  Your ikigai can be anything from simply taking the time to enjoy your morning coffee to catching up with old friends to working towards a life-defining goal.

Ikigai Is Not About….

It’s not about making money.
Ikigai is not the pursuit of professional success or financial freedom. Most Japanese would not associate making money with ikigai. Success and the accumulation of wealth could be a by-product of your ikigai, but it would not be the focus.

It’s not what the world needs from you.
Ikigai is not about what the world needs from you. Ikigai lies in the realm of community, family, friendships and in the roles you fulfill. When you pursue your ikigai, you are not out to save the world. It is more about connecting with and helping the people who give meaning to your life - your family, friends, co-workers and community.

It’s not about what you're good at.
You don’t have to be good at something to find your ikigai. Ikigai can be a very simple daily ritual or the practice of a new hobby. Ikigai is more about growth rather than mastery.

It’s often not about what you love.
Ikigai can be something you love or are passionate about, but you can find ikigai in areas of your life you would least expect. Ikigai is more about living your values and finding meaning and purpose in daily living regardless of what constraints you may have.

from ikigaitribe

ron reed | ashes are butterfly bones made of light and dust (2014)

Ashes Are Butterfly Bones Made of Light and Dust: 

God's Bones in their Wings 

(for Peter Norman) 

His bones are light, 

(radiant, bone-barred): 

Even the smallest bone in his inner ear, the bone chapel— 

bone etchings, 

bone song, 

bone dance, 

bone dream,

bone silence. 

Old momma teach me nerve ends 

made of juniper and bone, 

bear bones and feathers, 

bread and not bone; 

the bone broker. 

Here is a bone resembling a word; 

milk tooth bane bone 

seed-bone and hammer. 

When the bone fragments arc to earth 

the bone's song will be pulled, 

descending to my ankle-bones. 

The wind picks up the dust from the ashes, 

the white of bone; 

your bone, Morgan's bones, lean and boneless, 

the jazz-loosened loose bone thing he is. 

We will have only bones to hold; 

the bone ash of 

a red herring-bone skirt clasped with a bone button 

buried among femurs and knuckle bones 

where the bones of the child are hid. 

The stone’s praise 

for the sparrow’s ankle bone 

rising like a frozen flood 

of stone bone birds on the wing singing. 

I'm chilled clean through to the bone. 

by Ron Reed 

with Margaret Avison, Leonard Cohen, Joy Kagawa, Lorna Crozier, Lorne Daniel, Daniela Elza, Moira MacDougall, Michael McAloran, Cassidy McFadzean, Kath MacLean, Jill Battson, Joe Blades, Louise Halfe, Ben Ladouceur, Dennis Lee, Christine Murray, Carol Shillibeer, Anne Simpson, Elizabeth Zetlin, and Robert W. Service. 

* 

What the critics are saying; 

"Most of all it’s felt experience, what’s close to the bone – feelings, emotions, combined with a sense of craft." 

Cyril Dabydeen "The poem does not hang straggled and bone-whitened like rags in the bleaching sun. His engagement is with a burned and ruined corpse left out to dry and fossilize with its rag-remnant of torn flesh and chilled bone, an empty jaw-bone, a leaving from a physical life. Here is a victory-song for life pushing up through human-remains, detritus, stink and bone." Bone Orchard Poetry

"Cuts to the bone and then into the bone, to find the marrow." Turtle Island Native Network 

magritte | personal values | 'every time i look at it i feel ill'

In October 1952, René Magritte’s New York dealer, Alexander Iolas, a champion of the Surrealists in the United States and elsewhere, wrote him in protest. He had recently unpacked Personal Values(1952), the first of what are sometimes called Magritte’s hypertrophic images, in which oversized objects appear to crowd their settings. In this case, a lusciously painted tortoiseshell comb, a vivid blue-green glass, a gargantuan bar of soap, and other personal items dwarf a modest bedroom. The colors made him sick, Iolas reported. Had the work been hastily painted? He begged Magritte for an explanation:

"I am so depressed that I cannot yet get used to it. It may be a masterpiece, but every time I look at it I feel ill.... It leaves me helpless, it puzzles me, it makes me feel confused and I don't know if I like it."

One has to admire this freshness of perception in a man who also represented Max Ernst and was no stranger to disturbing imagery.  Perhaps Iolas’s honesty disarmed Magritte. “Well, this is proof of the effectiveness of the picture,” he replied. “A picture which is really alive should make the spectator feel ill.”

from an article by Regina Marler

The New York Review

October 25, 2018

aug 8 | the feast of the holy crossing

 

mary reuffle | i would rather wonder than know

It used to be if you were having dinner with people and someone said, “Who’s the fastest animal on earth?” An amazing conversation would ensue. And now someone pops their phone out and looks up the answer. And it breaks my heart….

Mary Reuffle

photos | william eggleston

 

self-portrait

more Eggleston here

photo | prarthna singh | my mother in her garden

 

The Guardian

photo | michael pasche | gct deltaport

 

hugh gallagher | college admissions essay

3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

---

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. 

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru. 

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge. 

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. 

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me. 

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis. 

But I have not yet gone to college.

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"It seems that Hugh Gallagher wrote this for a national writing contest, and that an Urban Legend has since arisen that he wrote it as an actual application essay.

"18 June 1998, update. Hugh Gallagher emailed me(!), and said: "I was happy to see my college essay on your site (by the the way, I did send it to colleges)". So that's that Urban Legend laid to rest, then? He also said "... and my first novel, Teeth, was published by Pocket Books this Spring. ... It's a coming of age tale about a guy with really messed up teeth, who goes travelling around the world instead of fixing his mouth." If it's told with anything like the style and wit of what follows, it should be great!"

Susan Stepney, 
Professor of Computer Science, University of York, UK

https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/essay.htm