This year, I started the term talking to you about joy and Ubuntu, as we began to think about our vision for the year ahead.
Today I want to talk to you today about ikigai, a Japanese word, translated as a sense of purpose.
I love Japanese cinema, and those of you going off to study Film Studies will come across, if you haven’t already, the works of Akira Kurosawa. While he may be famous for his epic samurai films, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ran, for me, his greatest work is Ikiru. This is a small story, about a man, a bureaucrat, who upon receiving news of being terminally ill, learns how to live and find value in the small day to day things. He finds purpose in pushing for the construction of a playground, and, in this touching scene, swings in the park he helped to build. He had found ikigai, his sense of purpose.
When I originally planned this assembly, I was going to show you this Venn diagram and reflect on the need to clarify our career goals and inner purpose, to motivate us for the exams and challenges ahead of us. But as I researched further on the term, I quickly found out that this diagram that I had long been familiar with, has nothing to do with ikigai or Japan, and actually originates from Spanish psychological astrologer, Andres Zuzunaga. While those questions, what do you love, what does the world need, what are you good at, what can you be paid for, are all very good questions to ask yourself, it is not ikigai.
Ikigai is not necessarily something you need to make money from, nor is not something the world needs, nor does it need to be something you are good at, nor is it something you necessarily love.
So what is ikigai?
Ikigai is a word composed of two parts, iki which comes from the word Ikiru, meaning to live.
And gai, which means value and comes from the word kai meaning shell. Brightly coloured and intricately decorated shells were seen of great value in Medieval Japan.
Ikigai means the value one finds in day to day living.
Ikigai involves all the things we value, from the little joys in life, to the pursuit of life defining goals. It is the process of cultivating your inner potential to make your life significant. It is in my mind the best description of the purpose of Sixth Form, a place to cultivate our talents, inside and outside the classroom, so that we may flourish and make a meaningful contribution to society.
Where the Venn diagram goes wrong is to suggest Ikigai is a single goal. Instead, ikigai is found everywhere, in our relationships, our hobbies and our work. As you work diligently, helping younger year students as Prefects and Peer Mentors, creating magnificent artworks or composing music, working towards improving your grades and towards your career goals, sharing a joke with your teachers, I want you to feel your ikigai. And in tomorrow’s VESPA activity, I want you to reflect on your WHY because it is only in reflecting on our why and our visions that we can we be motivated to achieve our goals.
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