What Japan makes of ikigai

NORM TAM spent most of his life climbing up the corporate ladder. In his early 40s he was earning a hefty salary as an executive at a global shipping firm. But he could not help feeling a bit empty. He started Googling terms such as “meaning” and “purpose”. Eventually, he stumbled upon a Venn diagram showing four circles labelled “what you love”, “what you are good at”, “what the world needs”, and “what you can be paid for”. His eyes fixed on the peculiar foreign word at the intersection of the circles: ikigai.