While I was doing the challenge, I had a realization:
Ikigai isn’t just the sum total of what you like doing, what you’re good at doing, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
It isn’t all of those things individually either.
What Ikigai actually is, in western terms, is the common thread in your life that runs between all of those things.
Think of getting a table at a family-owned restaurant:
It’s where different groups and generations of people have gathered for years, decades, even centuries.
And they’ve eaten and drank many different things over the years- some recipes went unchanged for decades or centuries, some created within the last year.
But regardless of the details, they all went there to have a bite to eat and a drink to hydrate themselves.
*That* is Ikigai in the sense of what people from Japan *actually* mean by it.