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The meaning of ichigo ichie is something like this: What we are experiencing right now will never happen again. And therefore, we must value each moment like a beautiful treasure.
Ichigo ichie can be translated as “Once, a meeting” and also as “In this moment, an opportunity.” What this means to tell us is that each meeting, everything we experience, is a unique treasure that will never be repeated in the same way again. So if we let it slip away without enjoying it, the moment will be lost forever.
As Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations, the drama of existence is not death but never having begun to live.
Treat your host as if the meeting were going to occur only once in your life.
When you part company, ichigo ichie would be an appropriate way to say goodbye. By saying this, you let them know that this was a pleasant encounter that will not happen again in the future.
If we discover our talent, open ourselves up to it, and make it a priority in our lives, our passion will be able to develop, leading to our happiness and that of others.
What matters isn’t how many more years we might live but what we will do with the time we have left.
if you’re brave enough to do what you love, every day could be the best day of your life.
anger keeps us tied to the past, preventing us from enjoying the here and now.
Sadness keeps us tied to the past because our attention is focused on what we lost, what no longer exists, or what we wanted but didn’t get. In any case, as long as we’re sad, we aren’t in the here and now.
Fear is an emotion that projects us into the future. When we live in fear, it’s impossible to enjoy what we do and what we have.
There is no way to protect ourselves from the first arrows, because life is an adventure full of constant risks, but what we can do is avoid shooting ourselves with the second ones, which are the worry and anxiety that arise from thinking about the first. The Buddha summed it up with perhaps his most famous saying, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
Happiness lies in wanting nothing outside ourselves, and in appreciating what life has to offer us while it lasts.
Learning to see the beauty of things also allows us to make them beautiful.
Once a month, handing the reins to chance when making decisions that can have no negative effect provides a different way of living an ichigo ichie life.
Another study, at the University of Miami in 2010, showed that when we hug someone, our skin’s receptors send a message to the nerve in our brain responsible for reducing blood pressure. Touching and hugging are beneficial even as a preventive therapy for many life-threatening illnesses. Four hugs a day are considered enough to boost a person’s emotional and physical health, but according to international relations expert Andy Stalman, the ideal number is eight six-second hugs a day. Six seconds is apparently the minimum length of time required for oxytocin—the hormone associated with
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Pine for stress relief.
Lavender for sleep.
Mint for concentration.
If we want to be able to look back on our lives with happiness and nostalgia, we can’t allow the present to be just a succession of days. We have the magic of our will to turn every encounter into something special.
