The diagram can manage without me

I am quite happy to call myself the ikigai guy when it seems useful. I have done so recently, in fact. So I can’t pretend this is a label imposed upon me by an unkind world. But I am less attached to the diagram than that introduction might suggest. I like what happened to it. I don’t particularly want to spend the rest of my life standing next to it.

In 2014, I put the word ikigai into an existing purpose diagram. I didn’t invent the Japanese concept or the four circles. I joined things that were already there, and the resulting image travelled much further than I could have imagined. There is something rather pleasing about that. A small thing escapes your immediate surroundings and starts having a life in places you may never visit.

The odd bit comes when something you’ve made becomes a convenient description of who you are. People need somewhere to begin with each other. “He did that” is useful information. It gives a conversation a way in. I just wouldn’t want it to become the only way in, or to find myself quietly arranging my interests around what would make sense beside the introduction.

I don’t feel that the most interesting thing I have to offer is ownership of a framework. It is how I might use something, or put it beside something else, or notice that it isn’t helping in this particular situation. A diagram can be useful. So can putting the diagram away. I would like to remain capable of both, including when my name is associated with it.

That feels easy enough to say about four circles. I am less sure how easy it is with all the other descriptions I carry around. Once I have told myself I’m good at something, I can begin expecting myself to keep being good at it. I might start avoiding places where I would have to be a beginner. And when something comes along that interests me for no immediately sensible reason, there is already a little committee in my head asking how it fits.

I have enough committees in my life.

Part of me would quite like a neat answer to what I am for. There would be practical advantages. Introductions would be shorter. Perhaps I could stop fiddling with the words on websites. But I also know how quickly I become interested in something that wasn’t included in the previous description. I don’t want every new interest to require a small identity crisis before I can follow it.

I still care about the questions around ikigai, and I am glad the image has given people a place to begin. I can be grateful for that without asking it to tell me what comes next.

The diagram seems perfectly capable of managing without me for a while. I would quite like to see where I end up.