What makes a good day?

credit here

Yesterday evening, I was on the terrace of my parents' house (during the summer, I usually spend a few days visiting them since I live in a different city), it was 00:30 in the morning, and for a good hour, I asked why I felt so empty. Don't get me wrong, the bright night sky full of stars didn't get me spiralling in an existentialist mood; it was just a consideration about that day. I felt empty; something was missing.

I started thinking more rationally through that question as a form of regaining control over myself by analysing what went good and wrong during the day. After a few minutes, I realised that it was not the right way to get to the core of what I felt.
So, as usual, I went to sleep mildly disappointed by my inability to reflect.

The next day, I woke up, and after a moment of mindless surfing online, I went on YouTube and watched a video that linked to another channel, for me uknow until this morning, and then I discovered a video that I left here for you to watch (if you want to). After that vision, I sit at my desk convinced that I want to find out what it means to have a good day.

Have a good day! 

In 2022, Christoph Kreiss1 and Tatjana Schnell published a paper about what it takes to have a good day. 

The starting point is the recognition that in modern (Western) society, daily life is largely de-traditionalized, more individualistic, and authorities like the church have lost their role as a compass for everyday life, and so, on average, people strive for maximising pleasure instead of a good life in the eudaimonic sense (more about it later). 

"Several studies indicate that meaning is not a stable construct, but changes from moment to moment and from day to day (King et al., 2006; Choi et al., 2017; Martela et al., 2018)".

The conclusion of the paper is that modern individuals can achieve a good life (and a good day as well), and it seems less relevant what activities they do, instead, it seems more important to know why they do them, to be able to frame them in a generally present sense of meaning in life (and not a meaning found in sacred texts or others, but developed one’s personal meaning in life). 

A conclusion that reminds me of the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (I know it's an overcited book, but if it so, there will be a reason).

Logotherapy and finding meaning

How can we find meaning in a life where chaos reigns supreme? There is no intrinsic meaning to be found, but rather a unique one that must be discovered by each individual.

"Live as if you were living a second time, as if you had failed so badly the first time that you could not fail again. It seems to me that nothing can stimulate a man's responsibility more than this maxim, which not only invites us to imagine the present as the past but also allows us to believe that the past can still be changed and modified. Such an imperative confronts a person both with the finiteness of life and with the purpose it gives to his own life and to himself."  - cit. Viktor Frankl

Logotherapy aims to go beyond traditional therapy. It doesn't just treat the individual as a product of what has happened to them (keep in mind that rationality is limited and therefore cannot comprehend the entirety of all past causes, but will only select a few of them); it also considers the direction they wish to take, even when there is a lack of clear guidance on what that direction should be. For Frankl, humanity is a tension between the finite and the infinite. Meaning is found in the very act of seeing oneself in one place, yet longing to be in another. This tension is the source of the individual's drive and his need to find meaning and a sense of direction in life.

In a nutshell, humanity, for Frankl, wants a meaning to live by (i.e. in which to dedicate themselves), that at the same time could be a reason to die for (i.e. for which they would sacrifice everything they have), and that reason is what gives meaning to everything: wealth, health, etc.

The reasons for the pain are therefore within, in the inability to give meaning to things.

The three drivers of meaning:

1. A future project: anything that any human being wants to complete in the future (or a goal to reach). 
   In this context, even if you suffer, the suffering is a driver of meaning.
2. Love and relationships: taking care of others.
3. Suffering: that Frankl calls the "task/challenge" (I don't know if it's a perfect translation). Life throws you challenges of any kind, and from those difficulties comes the push to overcome them, and that gives meaning.

In a way, Frankl reverses Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At the base are no longer physiological needs, but self-actualisation, because that would mean that without them—for example, without having met the need for security—then no one can achieve self-esteem or self-actualisation. But it's by considering our life as worth living that I can access certain achievements (and the other level of Maslow's hierarchy).

A this point, it is safe to ask, where can I find my meaning?

For Frankl, you can find your meaning by finding who you are, that is, finding the meaning that you would give to your life, and it has to do with your desire, skills, and talents. You have to make experiments, because you cannot wait until a signal comes from anywhere. 
And that even depends on your particular surroundings, in which you have to adjust and adapt your actions. And the meaning is what you discover about yourself that resists change.

The problem lies in the act of giving meaning, because it's not based on anything. Because it's the basis of everything. Of course, we give meaning because we've discovered things about ourselves, etc., but it's something that in a certain point we decide, it's a direction, so there's no guarantee of the outcome, because we might discover with experimenting (or living if you will) that many meanings aren't the right ones, and that's why it must be experimented with.

Eudamonia 

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his Ethics, said the goal of life is happiness. The Greek word for happiness is Eudaimonia.
This word is a combination of two parts:

• Eu, meaning "good" or "well."
• Daimon, which means "demon," but in the Greek sense of an inner spirit, a guiding force.

Therefore, Eudaimonia literally means "the good success of your inner spirit".
Each of us has a Daimon within (our unique virtue, talent, or purpose). And once you discover it, you have to realise it. If you are doing it well, you achieve Eudaimonia, that is, your own good self-realisation.

How do you find your Daimon? As the Oracle of Delphi famously proclaimed: "Know thyself". If you don't know yourself, how can you ever hope to discover your true purpose? Otherwise, you'll simply live life by imitating others (children grow up by imitative processes of their surroundings, but at a certain point they need to detach from these and become themself). 

This requires a deep process of self-reflection. You have to do the work to understand who you truly are. Yet, so often, we choose to simply distract ourselves from this essential task.

Once you have discovered your Daimon, you must realise it "with measure," as the Oracle also advised. Understand your own capacity and don't overstep your limits, or you will prepare your own downfall. Only by following both of these principles can you achieve true happiness.

And that it's backed even by modern research, as Huta and Ryan (2010) revealed that people mostly reported either hedonic or eudaimonic motives for their activities, but not both at the same time. The study finds that in the long run, a combination of both motive types predicted higher levels on several measures of well-being.

Jiga o shiru

A Japanese concept formed by two Japanese words, jiga (自己) meaning "oneself" or "ego," and shiru (知る), meaning "to know" or "to learn". So Jiga o Shiru is "to know oneself" or "to learn the self", and it involves:

1. Self-Reflection: to understand your motivations, values, and the core of your being.
2. Meditation and Spiritual Practices: practices like meditation lead to selflessness and true self-understanding.
3. Confronting the Ego: true self-knowledge often involves moving beyond the ego's attachments and limitations.
4. Developing True Subjectivity: reaching a deep, authentic sense of self that is not based on self-centeredness or obstinacy.

Ikigai

The concept of ikigai in the last decades, or less, gained attention worldwide by books like "IKIGAI: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life" by Héctor Garcìa and Francesc Miralles. A major success has been translated into 63 languages since its release in 2016.

For this book, Garcia interviewed more than 100 elderly residents of Ogimi Village, Okinawa Prefecture, renowned for average longevity. What Garcìa discovered is that those elders have one thing in common: each has an ikigai, or something worth living for. “When we asked what their ikigai was, they gave us explicit answers, such as their friends, gardening, and art. Everyone knows what the source of their zest for life is, and is busily engaged in it every day”, says Garcia.

Like other japanese words/concepts (i.e. wabi sabi), ikigai has not a direct traduction, so probably for helping western readers to understand Garcìa introduced in his book the venn diagram created by  Marc Winn to illustrate the concept of ikigai (in reality was originally created by Spanish astrologer Andrés Zuzunaga to represent his concept of "purpose". Marc Winn later replaced the word "purpose" with "ikigai,"), an intersection of four categories: what you love; what the world needs; what you can be paid for; and what you are good at.

So since the diagram is a Western construct, it's normal that it does not align with the traditional understanding of ikigai in Japan (see this blog post if you wanna read more).
The Ikigai refers to a passion that gives value and joy and/to life every day (to easily clarify this concept, I wanna share with you this video).

Conclusion

I started this blog post by asking myself what makes a good day, and as usual, this question led me through a fun discovery, and to realise that there is nothing in particular that makes a good day by itself; it's irrelevant the activity, and as our Japanese friends know, could be anything, the important thing is that it gives joy and life every day.

But to find out what our meaning is, we need to know why we do the things that we do, why we do something instead of something else. We can understand and define that push, that Daimon, only by forgetting ourselves and our ego's attachment, by knowing ourselves, because otherwise, how can you ever hope to discover our true purpose? 

In other words, we need to know ourselves first, and one way to self-reflect could be journaling (used since ancient times, like by Marcus Aurelius, and as Lawrence Yeo perfectly describes in his book Inner Compass, it is a tool for self-reflection and exploring "why" you did something or felt in a certain way).

The next step is to test what we've found and decide that whatever comes out, it will be our purpose, our direction, with no guarantee of the outcome, because we might discover with more experimentation that this wasn't the right one.