Ikigai : the Japanese secret to a long and happy life pdfdrive com

Never Stop Learning
“Y ou may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. L earn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”
—T. H. White, The Once and Future King
For his part, naturalist and author Edward O. Wilson asserted, “I feel I have enough experience to join those who are addressing big questions. About ten years ago, when I began reading and thinking more broadly about the questions of what are we, where did we come from and where are we going, I was astonished at how little this was being done.”¹²
Ellsworth K elly, an artist who passed away in 2015 at the age of ninety-two, assured us that the idea that we lose our faculties with age is, in part, a myth, because instead we develop a greater clarity and capacity for observation. “It’s one thing about getting older, you see more. . . . Every day I’m continuing to see new things. That’s why there are new paintings.”¹³
At eighty-six, the architect Frank Gehry reminds us that some buildings can take seven years “from the time you’re hired until you’re finished,”¹⁴ a fact that favors a patient attitude with regard to the passage of time. The man responsible for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, however, knows how to live in the here and now: “Y ou stay in your time. Y ou don’t go backward. I think if you relate to the time you’re in, you keep your eyes and ears open, read the paper, see what’s going on, stay curious about everything, you will automatically be in your time.”¹⁵
Longevity in Japan
Because of its robust civil registry, many of those verified as having lived the longest are found in the United States; however, there are many centenarians living in remote villages in other countries. A peaceful life in the countryside seems pretty common among people who have watched a century pass.
Without question, the international superstar of longevity is Japan, which has the highest life expectancy of any country in the world. In addition to a healthy diet, which we will explore in detail, and an integrated health care system in which people go to the doctor for regular checkups to prevent disease, longevity in Japan is closely tied to its culture, as we will see later on.
The sense of community, and the fact that Japanese people make an effort to stay active until the very end, are key elements of their secret to long life.
If you want to stay busy even when there’s no need to work, there has to be an ikigai on your horizon, a purpose that guides you throughout your life and pushes you to make things of beauty and utility for the community and yourself.