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I love those lines from Seinfeld: This has nothing to do with your friends. It’s such a special thing. This has nothing to do with making it. Decide now that you will not spend your precious energy speculating about someone else’s life and how it compares with yours.
We rob ourselves of immeasurable joy when we compare what we do know about ourselves with what we don’t know about someone else.
Is there any way in which you’ve been asking, What about them? when the better question is, What is that to you?
Whoever you are and whatever work you do, no one has ever lived your life with your particular challenges and possibilities.
When you say “yes” to your life and your path and your work in the world, you are entering into this mystery of creation, a mystery in which everybody starts with a blank page, and “everybody” includes you.
Is there any way in which you are not throwing yourself into your life because you’re convinced that you could never do it as well as so-and-so does it? Is there any way in which the blank page that is your life has got you stuck, terrified, asking that soul-crushing question, Who am I to do this? There is a new question, a better question, a question that will help you to be here. The new question is this: Who am I not to do this?
The Japanese have a word for what gets you out of bed in the morning: they call it your ikigai. Your ikigai is that sense you have when you wake up that this day matters, that there are new experiences to be had, that you have work to do, a contribution to make. Sometimes this is referred to as your calling, other times your vocation, your destiny, your path. Your ikigai is your reason for being.
You try lots of different things. You volunteer, you sign up, you take a class, you do an internship, you get the training, you shadow someone around for a day who does something that intrigues you. You follow your curiosity. You watch for things that grab your attention. This is much easier when you’re younger and have less financial pressure and fewer others depending on you, but it’s true no matter how old you are.
When you pursue your path, exploring the possibilities as you search for your ikigai, pay careful attention to things that make you angry and get you all riled up and provoke you to say, Someone should do something about that!!!
But there was this whole thing surrounding him—not just church, but a system that had built up around him of assumptions and rules and worldviews that appeared to me to have nothing to do with his life and message. Why was he so thrilling but the religion that had organized around him so boring and oppressive?
Some people find their ikigai by asking, What do I love to do? Others find theirs by asking, What makes me angry? What wrongs need to be righted? What injustice needs to be resisted?
Be honest about your joy. Sometimes our ikigai is jammed way down in our hearts somewhere because we were told early on, You can’t make money doing that, or That isn’t a real job, or That’s a waste of time. Ask yourself: Am I not pursuing my path because of what someone has told me is and isn’t acceptable? Which leads to another truth about your ikigai: It may involve a paycheck and it may not.
Some things you do for you. You do them because it gives you great satisfaction and it puts a smile on your face and that’s it.
You may love doing or creating or making or organizing something, but that’s different from it being your job. If music was my job, I’d hate it. What often happens is that we love doing a particular thing and so our next thought is, I should do this for my job. Here’s the problem with that impulse: Getting a paycheck for doing that thing you love may actually ruin it.
There’s a good chance your ikigai will change over time. Relax, this is normal. You may get trained to do one thing but end up doing something very different. You may get your dream job and then get fired. Or the company may have to lay people off or there’s only one opportunity at the moment in that particular line of work and it’s in New Zealand. Or Bangladesh. Or Ohio.
Nerves are God’s gift to you, reminding you that your life is not passing you by. Make friends with the butterflies.
Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like your life is passing you by.
