Ikigai is one answer to the question, “what is the meaning of life?”. This ancient Japanese philosophical term combines the word ikiru, which means "to live", and gai, which means "worth" and the concept refers to something that gives a person a sense of worth or a reason for living. Everyone has at one time or another experienced the feeling of being in the “zone”. When we do something we truly love we are transported to a place free of stress and anxiety and are able to use the full range of our strengths and gifts. The Japanese living in Okinawa would argue that spending the greatest portion of your life doing what you were meant to do is the key to longevity, joy and fulfillment of one’s purpose. 

A person’s ikigai lies at the intersection of four categories: what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you are good at. As a child or a young adult, this can be fairly easy to discover. If a young person is given the time, space and resources to pursue their unique passions, their ikigai can be seen in how they choose to spend their time, their greatest resource. As we grow older, and as societal pressures convince most of us that certain life choices are “better” or more valuable than others, most of us set our true passions aside and replace them with something more logical, responsible or socially acceptable. But if our unique ikigai is instead respected and valued, we are free to move into adulthood confident in not only a career path, but a direction for our life. Our goal at Quintral is to respect, value and acknowledge each students’ budding ikigai so that each one might find a path of service that feels most rewarding to them for many decades to come.