Ikigai

<DT><A HREF="http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/convertibles/0503_ikigai_man/"
  LAST_VISIT="1177883328" ADD_DATE="1177883328" TAGS="miata">Ikigai Man:
  Bob Hall and the Original Mazda Miata - Road Test & Review - Automobile Magazine</A>

  <!-- Encountered on 2026-09-14, delicious-20080118-223656.html -->

On a Sunday afternoon. April 29, 2007. Encountered the word “Ikigai” in an article on Bob Hall and the Mazda Miata. As evident in the in del.icio.us bookmark’s “miata” tag annotation, read that as a car guy, rather than as a philosophy of life. As is often the case, when something captures attention at one level, an idea slips in undetected at a deeper one. Such is the nature of resonance.

The Father of the Miata – Bob Hall – had a “vanity licence plate [that read] IKIGAI, a Japanese word that, loosely translated, means “obsession,” or “the thing you do in life that justifies your existence.” At the time, was not thinking about career optimization, finding my purpose, or the later four-way Venn diagram. Obsession, but not the unhealthy kind. Actually more like devotion.

A powerful familiar current flows within:

a childhood delight → accumulated mastery → perception of absence → stubborn creation → object in the world

The object in created: What if not another abstract personal expression. Rather useful to thousands of others. The world enriched by personal obsession.

You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes much sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

IKIGATA, not quite “find your purpose”, as a systems thinker closer to:

What recurring form does your life take when fascination, mastery, and contribution are allowed to run long enough?

Software, innovation labs, cars, humane technology, The Scrolls, Coherent Node, maintenance, care, music, craftsmanship. A range of subjects, superficially unrelated. With enough distance, a pattern emerges. A constant deeper motion. Not unlike the ocean current - continuous and directed movements of water.

notice what ought to exist (the gap, the hole) → understand the system deeply → refuse the received constraints → make the thing.

Examples: Miata, NSX, LFA. How appropriate Hall wasn’t writing about ikigai, he was driving around with it. As any true driver knows, this feels much closer to the spirit of the concept than turning it into a life-planning exercise.

So this 2007 bookmark was not quite “the first time I learned of a Japanese concept”, it turned out to be an early breadcrumb for a recurring rediscovery:

Life need not be be justified by a grand mission. The hole in your heart == what you cannot stop caring about. Make it better, wholeheartedly.

This encounter inspired this visualization: