“He who is not busy being born is busy dying”

Bob Dylan

Lucky for us we don’t have the think. The Japanese have already coined the term – “Ikigai”.

It roughly translating to the “Reason for being” or “Value for living”. We weren’t designed to be animals caged up in a dimly lit conference room. We aren’t designed to lock ourselves in the psychological walls of a cubicle. And yet for 8 hours each day we do just that. We’ve walled ourselves in this routine out of the desperation for money.

Alan Watts has got a few words on that.

There are people who’s work feels like play. They do exist. The CEO of NVIDIA talks about not loving every day, but loving what’s being built. Larry Paige talked about his love for his sailboat, and his deep desire to create a job that would feel the same.

But the vast majority of us aren’t afforded such luxury. But we put such a low value on the things that bring us intrinsic joy. We gloss over our hobbies and activities that bring us life. They are secondary to the demands of daily life, if at all.

Society asks us to provide value, and we provide. But at what expense? Have we forgot the essence of living requires us to actually live? That in order to live a life well lived we’ve got to enjoy it?

And yet, the conferences, the late nights, the days on-call… they all seem to take priority over the true spirit of our lives – to feel alive. Shan’t we be prioritizing the things, the hobbies, that activities that make us feel alive?

But sorry, can’t go, I’ve got work.

The whole system seems to fight us. The responsibilities always seem to trump. The extra hours trump the back packing trip. The 8 hours trumps the lunch with our friends. And the soft hum of rhythm trumps the trip to Europe we always though we’d take. For work.

Creation

There’s value in creation. No, not the company value… the value of the soul. It levels up with each experience of creation. Every outburst of passion and creativity we area rewarded… not in the bonus pay check, but in the quality of our soul.

It doesn’t quite matter what it is, but in having an outlet we are immediately rewarded with vitality. I’ve stumbled across the artform of writing. It has brought me tremendous value. And yet the beginning was a blind fumble in the dark. It was my mind shouting at me for something, desperate to escape the monotony of worldly pleasures. It demanded something. It demanded to be free.

The mind demanded creation. It wanted to evolve.

Short Story

One vacation a few years ago to the North Shore of Oahu, I ran into a 6 foot-tall bearded man driving a boujie-ass blacked out Audi R8. Soft top, top down, during sunset in Hawaii. We bumped into him at a restaurant, somehow struck up conversation and I asked how he made his wealth:
“I build things and I sell things”

The motives could have been monetary. Who knows? But it’s clear that he provides a value to people. It was also clear in his joy at creation.

We’re supposed to make things. We’re supposed to make ourselves.

Modernity

The past few weeks I’ve thought about the modern world we’ve gotten ourselves in. Everything around us has been built by some other human. Apple was a passion project. As was Amazon. As was Home Depot.

But funny enough, the best seem built by the most passionate.

Right now I’m sitting at my L-shaped desk made in China, wearing over-ear Sony headphones from Japan, using computer chips designed in Taiwan. That’s the world.

Everything we see and use has been designed then built by humans – the shoes, lotion, street signs, Honda Accords, cardboard boxes, matches, and crappy bottle of Walmart wine… it’s all just schtuff other humans figured out how to make.

We go on generation after generation making and using things created by those who came before. The food we eat. Candles we smell. The music we hear.

It’s all a creation.

The snails pace of a regular lifetime doesn’t seem to change too dramatically, but over the span of centuries we’ve manufactured a world that our president from 300 years ago couldn’t dream.

That’s the beauty of the human mind. We get to create. Our brains are wired to create. They’re wired for thought, for a Consciousness.

And if we aren’t creating, we are wasting one of the greatest characteristics that make us human.

We would also be missing one of the greatest sources of Joy.

“A life lived for art is never a life wasted”

Macklemore