There is a Japanese expression, otona joshi, literally "grown-up girls." It seems to be used less about age than about women who fully take on their everyday lives as adults while keeping hold of their feelings for the things they love. Even when the day is filled with work and family, they keep a room for what they love somewhere deep in their hearts.
Ikigai was originally an everyday word
In recent years, the word IKIGAI has often been introduced abroad. It is usually explained with a diagram: the center where four circles overlap, "what you love," "what you are good at," "what the world needs" and "what you can be paid for."
That diagram, however, was originally made outside Japan, and it is said to differ a little from the Japanese word ikigai. The psychiatrist Mieko Kamiya, in her 1966 book On Ikigai (Ikigai ni tsuite), wrote about ikigai as something much simpler. Waking in the morning and thinking, "I will live today too." Having small pleasures. Feeling that it is all right for you to be here. It was not about a grand purpose, but about the texture of everyday life.
Displaying art is practice in taking care of yourself
Well-being, too, does not need anything special, I think. Sleeping well. Eating something warm. Placing something you love where you will see it.
My work is painting, and I feel that hanging a painting also means "making room for yourself." Not for your family, not for guests, but hanging something you love on the wall you look at most. It may seem small, but it is practice in taking care of yourself.
One client told me, "Every time I look at it, I feel happy, as if I were being praised." Another began bringing the colors used in her painting into her clothes and accessories, and found dressing up more fun. One painting on the wall lifts your mood a little each day. I think that is the kind of work it does.
Not letting go of what you love
As adults, we tend to choose things by asking, "What is this useful for?" But keeping something you love in your life, even if it is not useful. Having that one corner is probably close to what is called ikigai.
Related articles
