THE REASON FOR WHICH I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
Posted: July 14, 2011 | Author: thenaturalist | Filed under: Winooski, Worrying/Wondering |Leave a comment »Mehmet Oz, who is a heart surgeon, believes deeply that having purpose in your life is the key to good health — especially after retirement, when your cognitive health might begin to decline. Instead of treating retirement as a time to take it easy, Dr. Oz proposes a different path. In Japan they call it ikigai, which means “the reason for which we wake up in the morning.” Finding that reason for living is critical, says Dr. Oz, especially in the United States, where so much of our ikigai seems tied to our careers. He recommends identifying activities that we enjoy and that help maintain our cognitive health and suggests that the best activities combine social engagement, physical activity, and intellectual stimulation. So I guess I’m on the right track. For social engagement I meet friends for breakfast and sustain rich and various email correspondences. For physical activity I take walks here at home and in Winooski, and every once in a while Winooski motivates me to row. For intellectual stimulation, I read every issue of The New Yorker from cover to cover, and I’m also trying to develop various Web projects that involve creating searchable archives of various quotations, ideas, facts, and miscellaneous bits of information I find interesting. So I guess I’m on track, even if I do sometimes worry about what it all means, which I don’t think I’d be doing if these activities were indeed my ikigai… For homework, I think I need to explore my “reason for which I wake up in the morning”….
