The Dichotomy between soaring desire and low ambition

Today, while performing my daily browsing ritual, I came across an article on the ever-increasing desire and the waning ambition, the millennial’s hate for Mondays and their effort of ‘finding themselves’ in the abyss.

With every brand targeting the millennial and the Facebook’s insatiable urge to follow us to the grave – the new consumer generation, find things overwhelming. While being ambitious is branded gluttony, the market never leaves a stone unturned to entice us into buying more without keeping a constant flow of purchasing power.

Now if we follow the social demand of keeping the desires alive without ambition— we might just end up squabbling over the same piece of meat like little hungry dogs and at the end no one is content. We cannot stoop to this level, can we? After all, we’re humans.

Well, the market and the government will do what it has to do, to maintain the rigmarole of its existence. We can’t change it; however, efforts can be made to change ourselves. I'm neither asking anyone to stop desiring nor am I advocating high ambition.

I can only say what few Zen masters have said before:

Do not desire too much, not to desire to stop desiring.

Let’s be pragmatic, we all can’t be ambitious together, nevertheless we can do our best to what we do (even on Mondays) and let the effort pave our course. Let not everyone be a creator, we need more people to sustain the creation. The world now, needs less heroes and more humans.

Humans need less – they’re ‘Minimalist’. Minimalism isn’t a fad, it’s a way of living, living with what you need, not what you want. It’s not shunning desire, it’s living with it and having a check on it. Every desire can never be fulfilled, or we would’ve had ‘fishes on trees’.

Minimalism doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with owning material. The problem is the meaning we assign to stuffs we own. We end up giving more meaning to our things than health, relationship, passion, etc. If you dream of owning a car, go buy it, see if it’s important to you. If you want to own a house, go own it. Minimalism simply helps you to make decision consciously, but not deliberately because ‘Sharma ji k bete neh kharid liya, to mujhe bhi lena hai’.

Minimalism is a tool to identify what’s important in your life and focus on it, as we all know— a man with less, sleeps well.

Yugen – Creativity and the feeling

Well, this is a topic most people won’t like it and might come as a devil to most of the teachers. We know all our universities and schools are trying to teach creativity through workshops and creative programs and it’s a big thing these days.

However, the trouble is, if we found out a method to teach creativity and everybody could just know the formula for creating a beautiful object, it would no longer be of interest. What always is an essential element of creativity is the ‘Mysterious’.

It’s when Yugen comes into play, Yugen – a Japanese word comprising of two kanji characters meaning ‘mysterious’ and ‘deep’ roughly translates into – ‘an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for the words’.

There’s a Japanese Haiku poem that says:

“When the bird calls, the mountain becomes more mysterious”

With this kind of poem you see, you get a feeling, which might mean nothing, but that nothing is everything. Creativity is that experience when the thought wanders into that nothingness (void) and this is Yugen.    

Yugen is the sensation of life that keeps you going, without the thought of a specific destination. It’s when the space is used to keep your imagination flowing into it without being specific. Creativity is an experienced and cannot be learnt.

To further elaborate, lets talk about humour, a joke as we know is funny as it hints at something, but you never explain to yourself why you laughed, because that will spoil the joke. In the same way, there is this mystery, which is never defined, and which you understand and see the beauty, just as the humour of the joke. Thus, there is no philosophy of humour nor any for creativity and discussing more about it is futile.

Seek a meaningful life not a happy one

We all want to be happy, but most of us have no idea what to do. 

Should we make more money? 

Should we focus on pursuing our passions?

Should we give up all our material possessions and become a monk in the mountains?

Well, we all have a different take on it and there are times when nothing seems to work. 

Having said that, let me introduce you to the concept of ‘ikigai’, few identify it with the Japanese formula of happiness, but I say, it helps you lead a more meaningful life. Well, let’s be honest, happiness has no exclusive rights of the path to heaven.

Ikigai roughly translates into ‘a reason for being’, you need to have a purpose of living. Though it sounds easier than done, when you know nothing is under your control. However, there are four components you need to check to achieve ‘ikigai’. 

1) Find something you love:  

Find things that make you feel good, that makes us stop thinking for a short period of time, few call it the ‘Flow State’.  This could be drawing, singing, reading, etc. – that takes you to the state of bliss where you feel focused. The same happens when you fall in love with someone because being with that person allows us to forget all the other problems at least momentarily.

2) Find something that the world needs:

We humans are hardwired to feel good when we know we are needed. Back in the day when we were hunters, it was easy, as everybody played an important part—the hunter was as important as the cleaner, and one could easily gauge the effect of one on the other. However, nowadays, most people work in corporations – being given small roles in massive companies, where even if we work our butts off, it’s hard to see the positive outcome, it doesn’t look we’ve accomplished anything and even if we quit, no one will really care. You need to find something that creates a positive impact around you and that’s the second component of ikigai.

3) Find something that you get paid well for:

Let’s be real– ‘You need money’ – money to put a roof over your head, food in your mouth and clothes in your body. Without enough of it, you’ll spend most of your life worrying and stressed. It is crucial to earn not just some money, but a good enough to live a comfortable life. You need to live without stress and achieve financial independence, which is the third component of ikigai.

4) Find something that you’re good at:

This doesn’t mean you’ve got to be born with talent – it means you’ll have put in time and effort in order to get better at the skill. We often face difficulty in the beginning when we take the first step; however, practice is the key, which lets you overcome the hurdle, and this makes it the fourth component of ikigai.

The Venn diagram below gives a better picture of what ikigai is and how to strike a balance between Passion, Mission, Profession and Vocation.