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ew0k writes about
And the difficulties therein.
To repeat ew0k, and many others, "ikigai" refers to the intersection of:
and the implicit advice to have your day job meet all four. Great, if you can manage it! But like Aristotle's advice to be slaveowner who devotes oneself to improving leisure, this isn't something that can easily be achieved by everybody, even if it might, at least in principle, be achieved by anybody.
Broadly it seems that the contemporary capitalist economy seems built up to provide lots of slots for:
My advice? Otherthrow the system, of course! But in the meantime - and for any future socialism that will certainly have to deal with the fact that some necessary tasks are not fulfilling - I think that it may be worth promoting the idea of an avocation - that is, a "mission" that is at least as important as your "day job."
For the vast majority of people who want to do one of the interesting and fulfilling things, they're better off with this route than they would be trying to make it *as* a writer or musician or philosopher or whatever: doing those things professionally requires either extreme luck, a bunch of totally useless status jockeying that is neither fulfilling nor useful, and in most cases both.
The nice thing about the day job is that you don't have to hold it to high standards - it should just be enough to feed your family, not make the world worse, and leave you enough time to do your REAL mission. This is still, for many people, a tough row to hoe, but at least it's strictly easier than ikigai.