IKIGAI for women

IKIGAIis a Japanese concept which means “a reason for being“. The word Ikigai is usually used to indicate the source of value in one’s life. It indicates the things that make one’s life worthwhile. Here is the concept of Ikigai.

1. When, what you love and what you are good at meet, it is your passion.
2. When, what you are good at and what you get paid for meet, it is your profession.
3. When, what you get paid for and what the world needs meet, it is your vocation.
4. When, what the world needs and what you love meet, it is your mission.

An Ikigai lies in the middle of all these.  

According to the Japanese, everyone has an “Ikigai”.

An Ikigai is essentially ‘a reason to get up in the morning’, a reason to enjoy life.

A balance between – (1) What you love (2) What you are good at (3) What you get paid for (4) What the world needs – leads to long, healthy and happy life. To find happiness we need to find balance. We need to find our own Ikigai.

Being a current era working cum home making woman, my mind naturally drifted towards finding out what could possibility be an Ikigai for a modern day working cum home making women.

Till the last generation, in almost all societies across the world there was a convenient division of labour, where women were taking care of household activities, families, children, elderly members of the family and cooking activities at home, while men went out and were engaged in various activities in the society. Unfortunately, this kind of arrangement, though had been evolved with a good intention, resulted in a wide disparity between men and women.

As the society is evolving towards equal opportunities for both the genders, current era women, who can be considered as the transitional stage women, have to balance both the responsibilities within home and outside home, without compromising on any of the not mutually exclusive roles. For most of the women, it becomes more like riding on both the horses at the same time. Almost all the women, whether they work at home or work outside or are trying to balance both, they happen to spend most of their time at home in cooking and care giving activities.

In this scenario, could there possibly be an Ikigai for current era women?

When – what you love and what you are good at – meet, it is your passion.

When – what either you love it or not and what you are either good at or not – meet, it is ‘cooking and care giving’.

When – what you are good at and what you get paid for – meet, it is your profession.

When – what you are either good at or not and what you don’t get paid for, anyway – meet, it is ‘cooking and care giving’.

When – what you get paid for and what the world needs – meet, it is your vocation

When – what you don’t get paid for and what the world/home anyway needs – meet, it is ‘cooking and care giving’.

When – what the world needs and what you love – meet, it is your mission

When – what the world/home needs and what the world expects you to love – meet, it is again ‘cooking and care giving’.

An Ikigai lies in the middle of all these.

A current era woman gets stranded in the middle of all these, finding no way out, how much ever educated she might have been, however big her career profile is and however big her professional status at work might be, if at all she wants to balance her family life and work life well.

Is there a solution for this?

Here are my few suggestions and thoughts:

1. Cooking and care giving at home should be a common activity across gender and age.
2. All family members should participate in the preparation of food collectively sharing the daily chores among themselves.
3. Kids should be involved in whatever ways possible.
4. Everyone should understand that cooking is cumbersome and time-consuming most of the times. It cannot be taken for granted from women.
5. Taking care of children or elderly should be shared between all the able members of the family irrespective of age or gender.
6. Diet should be simple, given the wide-spread diseases among people due to unhealthy food practices.
7. Cooking methods can be simple and less time consuming. Most of the items eaten raw or half-cooked is healthy than cooking it too much for making them tasty.

Wishing you all a happy transformation into sharing of cooking and care giving activities by all the able members of the family irrespective of gender or age, so that we can ensure equitable growth of the humanity as a whole and everyone will get a fair chance in finding their own ikigai irrespective of gender.