The Japanese word ikigai roughly translates to one's reason for living, or one's driving force.
This year has been full of trials and heartaches as well as small, myriad moments of joy. I left my soul-crushing retail job in February to preserve my sanity and find a different career, and it's been an uphill battle harder than I could have imagined. Continuous failures and rejections have left me feeling that my life is meaningless and that any opportunity for success and happiness left me a long time ago. I still have moments where it feels like giving up is the only solution.
In my darkest moments, I have instead turned to working on myself and trying to build the community around me. I'm a firm believer that if you want to see love and support in your life, it is vital to first show love and support towards others. If you want a friend who lights up your life, you have to become the person you admire. I don't know how much sense this makes. It's just a way for me to soothe my wounds, so I wouldn't claim that I'm good at loving people. I don't know if I'm even a good friend, really; I've made lots of mistakes and been abandoned by people who I thought loved me. But I want my life to be in service to others, and even the smallest amount of positivity in this broken world is meaningful. I want to be the one who hopes and cheers and believes in magic and miracles, inspired by the strangers throughout my life who have been kind to me without asking anything in return. If I could somehow do that for a living, I think everything else would work out.
What we feel are tiny, meaningless actions are actually the most important of all. A smile, a kind word, and sending the first message just for the sake of it. I'll keep trying to be the light that captures your eyes even if I fall down often and cry easily. All I want is for my life to have meant something, and I hope this world becomes a little better than I found it.
