By Cyrus Johnson

We recently learned about Ikigai in class. Ikigai is the purpose of living, and is broken down into what you love, what the world needs, what you are good at, and what you can be paid for, ikigai being the intersection of all four. A lot of people believe that finding your ikigai and following it can let you live with more direction and for longer. When we started learning about it, we were given a packet to read with a diagram of the four parts of ikigai intersecting, and we were gonna go around and share what we put in each part.

I don’t know what the world needs, or what I’m good at, but I’ve been told I was good at picking things up and putting things together. I’m not too sure what that meant, but it would explain why I can learn Japanese easily. I like to play games and draw, so I put those in the “what you love” section, and for the “what you can be paid for” section, I put making games and selling my work.

After we all shared what we put on the diagram, Sally asked us what we would reflect on positively when we’re older, and we all shared. I said that I’d probably remember the people I did things with more than the thing I did, and that they would make up for the things I didn’t like in that activity. At my school, since we don’t meet any new students past 6th grade, we make really close friends with our classmates, and more often than not we end up going to school more because we want to see our friends than because we need to, or at least I do. We wouldn’t be able to meet other people without looking for a new thing to do outside of school, so I hadn’t met many new people until I started this class.