At the turn of the 19th century, Kant asked, “Why is work the best way to enjoy one’s life?” The answer: “Because it is a burdensome occupation (in itself unpleasant and only gratifying through success), and rest becomes palpable pleasure, glee, through the mere disappearance of a long complaint…” Even more succinct is a saying of Count Zinzendorf: “One does not work merely to live, but one works for the sake of work.”

As a result, the individual’s lifetime was one long day of work. Rest came only with death. Apparently, only the women of the so-called high society remained exempt from this harsh rule. The era was marked by consumer asceticism, with the aim of capital accumulation, large investments in new inventions and constant increase in productivity.

One thing is certain today: our consumption of goods and services is increasing daily and therefore takes up a growing share of our time, which is always limited to 24 hours.

If we distance ourselves from Count Zinzendorf and Kant and travel to postmodern Japanese Zen philosophy, there are two fundamental questions that boomed in Japanese magazines and books in the mid-1960s, when the standard of living was improving due to the economic boom:

Ikigai and Shinigai

Loosely translated, Ikigai means: that which is worth living for. And you may already guess what shinigai means: that which is worth dying for. (What I am destined for. The own search for the destiny)

Since life is temporal, we can also ask ourselves, what is worth spending time on and what is not worth spending our precious time on?

In this regard, I would like to tell about values, visions and missions as we find them in every office nowadays. You are guaranteed to find terms like “Kaizen” in every workshop when it comes to constantly improving the quality of work life. However, kaizen is not necessarily a value, such as sustainability, respect, punctuality and other similar terms that represent values of a company.

Kaizen means to improve in small steps, constantly with the change of time. Above all, this means for employees, as well as management members and owners of a company: to dedicate themselves to improvement every day.

These days, it’s no longer enough to define annual missions and visions that then gather dust in the office. Nowadays, almost on an hourly basis, one should ask oneself: do I feel positive about being alive? Is it worth continuing to live like this?

In this respect, instead of values, it makes sense to introduce taboos in (working) life: A first taboo would be, for example, that it is forbidden not to obey the taboos. A second taboo would be that it is forbidden to treat employees disrespectfully. A third taboo would be that it is wrong not to learn from mistakes.

Now I would like to explain why it is worthwhile to live according to some simple taboos:

Taboo means to restrict oneself permanently and unconditionally. For example: I restrict myself every day not to lie. Instead of forcing myself to want to tell everyone the truth every day, I make it easier on myself and deliberately don’t spread untruths.

Restrict comes across negatively to most people because the word is used in a bad way, “Are you restricted?” or “No, I won’t be restricted!”

But let’s not forget that time is also “limited”. To limit oneself in life means to live more consciously, and while we are on the subject of consciousness:

Meditation also means to limit oneself to the breath and if possible to no thoughts in order to open oneself to the greater to infinity. Through restriction, we learn to devote ourselves to the whole improvement and give the highest respect to time and change.

Ask yourself the question: What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? What do I want to be? And: What above all do I not want to be?

(Sources & Inspiration: “Pantha Rhei” Paul Erni, Wikipedia)

Blogpost Image Ikigai and Shinigai