Passion’s Synonym
Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom at Arashiyama (c. 1834), woodblock print, by Utagawa Hiroshige
The train ran at extreme speed. I was looking at the speedy trees. My earphones kept my eyes open with ‘Stitches’, ‘Delicate’, ‘Perfect’... by the way, Beatles was winning. Most of the passengers were sleeping. The vendors were shouting from the door of the compartment. A boy was waving his hands with some books. I could see a small blue book in his hand. I guessed, “It’s a picture book...no...the cover...it’s…It’s Ikigai!” I called him with a hand gesture. He gave me that book and two other books. I told him, “Just give me that one. ”
He grinned and said, “Madam, if you take three, I’ll give you all at half the price!”
That was a pretty good deal. I slipped those two other books into my beige tote. I flipped Ikigai. I read ‘Prologue’. Then I casually lifted my fingers along some pages. One phrase caught me in that casual move; it’s ‘Blue Zone’. The easiest interpretation of this phrase would be ‘where people live the longest’. The authors mentioned five ‘Blue Zones’ and the different health attributes. Some even matched with our family’s traditional lifestyle patterns. I grabbled around the surface of my tote. I touched the pencil. I marked the ‘Blue Zone’ list. I felt like moving to Okinawa or Sardinia or any other place from that list. I felt like I might have scarpered to the Okinawa ambience with a whoosh of silent breeze. But the crowd woke up in the middle of my long-term imagination tour. I paused. I tucked the book-mark on that page and closed the blue book. The bags were pulled out snappily. We reached Howrah station.
After a few days, I again sat with the book. The ‘Blue Zone’ theme and now the Ikigai diagram kind of aroused me to go beyond the hush-hush scheme of imagination.
One thing is pretty clear that we all can’t shift to those five places to live longer. It is also not possible to copy every lifestyle condition from those places. But one thing is possible; that is to create a micro blue tinge in each one of our moments. In the Ikigai circle, one point glossed; that is “What you love”. Other points will drive well if we can find our love for our activities. The concept of Ikigai never focuses the attention only around the diet, lifestyle, or age-factors. Ikigai majorly focuses on self-development and then shows the incessant vibration of that energy to the next person.
The very first step, “What you love” is a matter of discussion for each one of us. We do multiple things for different reasons, be it materialistic or ritualistic. Imagine a time, when we could all stand in a position where we would be doing the most likeable task. That aura could bring the sense of true happiness. But the decision to take the first step to complete the Ikigai circle is definitely a twisted task because we’re not functioned or ‘blessed’ in a way to pick the lovable tasks every time. Or, we don’t know how our individual passions can be transferred for the benefit of the world. It definitely needs some work and a little bit of responsibility to incorporate likeable tasks into our quotidian to-dos. But the realization to find “What you love” is priceless. It’s the only thing that is not controlled or conditioned; it’s a wish which could be fulfilled. I call that wish Ina*.
Wish comes the truthfulness of a passionate individual, and then the ‘Blue’ tinge gets visibility. The loveable initiations always find the way to reach the next person with the value of truthfulness. The Japanese term ichi-go-ichi-e talks about “This moment exists only now and won’t come again.” But if that is wrapped in passion, it can move blithely.
(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)