the United States, actuaries at the Social Security Administration have calculated the age at which we end our productive lives and start becoming recipients of care and assistance. It’s called retirement. And we’re more likely to die the year we retire than we are during our last year of work. Coincidence? In Okinawa, there’s none of this artificial punctuation of life. Instead, the notion of ikigai—“the reason for which you wake up in the morning”—imbues people’s entire adult lives. It gets centenarians out of bed and out of the easy chair to teach karate, or to guide the village
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