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Give love and life permission to carry you

I have always and sincerely expressed my wish to retire at 45. By the time I turned 45 I was disappointed for not having made my wish come true. A disappointment that didn’t last that long, when a friend pointed out to me in just a few words to put me back in shine-mode: ‘You’ve already been retired for a long time, every day you are doing what you love to do.’ He was ab-so-lu-te-ly right! I am known for doing only what I love to do, which makes me feel that I am alive and do the things unconstrained, because I do it with love.

In my corporate career people could be surprised about the fact that I didn’t mind working longer. I didn’t do it for the company; I did it for the person with his or her partner sometimes with a family in a file going through my hands. I wanted to be there for them, I wanted to simplify their lives by resolving and arranging their issues within the legal policies. Coming to a fitting solution with all the research made me happy. Getting result by getting into the flow, not because of the result, but because of the flow. Already as a kid I could break my young brains over grown up worries and the problems in the world. That much that influenced the way I would stand. ’You look like Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders’, my dad would say.

My family lines have brought many members to high ages in good health. There were some exceptions for sure, due to their own choices like an unhealthy diet, inadequate sleep and inadequate exercise. A brother of my grandfather for instance reached far in his eighties. Because my grandfather passed away when my dad was a kid, my grandfather’s brother became my grandfather, my Adja. He was pundit within Sanatan Dharma, a school within Hinduism. He was anything but the average grandfather. My Adja would read the Holy Scriptures, have a healthy diet and when you’d visit him it wasn’t a surprise that he’d have a conversation with you while in a sirsana (headstand) during his yoga sessions. All of this on a daily basis. He was showing his daily ‘go with the flow’ way before Western thinking was affected by it.

My grandparents are from a generation where you take care of each other, your community, until you give your last breath. A beautiful principle and also obvious: willing and being able to be there for another human gives meaning to life.

I will get older in healthy way, with a flexible body, with a marvellous brain and a never lasting thirst for knowledge. I see to it that my eternal young spirit will always seduce my aging body to stay as young, with a healthy diet, adequate exercise but mostly with positive minded and loving people surrounding me. I go with the flow, that flow to which I have given love and life permission to carry me.

Ikigai or the raison d’être, the reason why we wake up every day, doesn’t only just introduce herself in this book, but also shows how she works within you, within me, within all of us. You don’t need to look for your flow, you already have one. It’s about the quality of that flow. A book like Ikigai can adjust that flow where needed. Ready for a better flow? Get your own copy over here.

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