The Ikigai Explorer

Article 1: Clues from Childhood

Introduction

This is the first in an eight-part series adapted from pages in my personal journals, travel memoirs, and reflections. It chronicles my own search for Ikigai, Japan’s concept for "a reason for being." These aren’t just stories from my life, but signposts that I hope will help you find and follow your own authentic path as well. Each article is framed to help you connect the dots in your own life, to draw meaning from your memories, and move forward with intention.

What Is Ikigai?

Ikigai is a Japanese concept that loosely translates to “your reason for being.” It sits at the intersection of four core questions:

• What you love (Passion) – Activities that bring joy and fulfillment.
• What you’re good at (Vocation/Talent) – Skills and strengths where you naturally excel.
• What the world needs (Mission) – Ways to contribute meaningfully to others.
• What you can be paid for (Profession) – Work that offers financial stability.

Finding Ikigai is about discovering your overlap, your unique intersection, and walking a path that lets you live authentically, even through challenges. That path isn’t always straight. For most of us, it begins in childhood.

Opening Reflection

We all begin life as curious children. Before jobs, expectations, or the pressure to choose a path, we were all pulled by something. In this first article, I’m revisiting the earliest breadcrumbs of my path, those seemingly small quirks and moments that whispered clues about who I really was and what I was meant to become.

Clues from the Beginning

It was the 80s, so as expected, I had several G.I. Joe toys. My family members were generous with adding to my collection; however, due to some miscommunication, I ended up with three of the exact same Army Jeep from the G.I. Joe line. Instead of trading them or tossing one aside, I created parking spaces for them on the floor of my closet using masking tape. In my mind, even back then, the Jeep convoy was the perfect method of transportation for expeditions. 

I didn’t gravitate toward the soldier-type figures; I loved the ones that looked like explorers, particularly a character named Dusty. He looked like he belonged in the desert, on a dig site, not on a battlefield. 

Weekends meant camping trips with my family, and although we likely didn’t realize it then, those trips were shaping my relationship with nature and instilling a sense of adventure. I wasn’t just a kid playing outside; I was a kid learning to feel at home in the wild. My mom had a talent for crafting makeshift weapons for me, and between nunchucks and slingshots, I kept myself busy. 

But one moment in particular stands out above the rest. I still remember it clearly:

I remember being at a family friend's home, why specifically or who it was I can't recall. One of their kids was watching something on TV. It was a movie that I somehow had never seen before. There was this rugged-looking man, dressed in dusty brown leather, he wore a wide-brimmed hat and carried a whip. 

The movie showed him being lowered into a pit of snakes with some annoying screaming girl in a dress. He used a torch to keep the snakes away until the torch burnt out. He looked vaguely familiar. He climbed up a statue of an Egyptian god. Yes that's right, he was in Star Wars... The statue started rocking back and forth. Holy crap, that's Han Solo! He rode the statue as it burst through a stone wall, he grabbed the girl and ran through a room of mummies before escaping certain death. She called him Indiana Jones... 

Something in me clicked. It was time to leave. Dad wanted to go back home. How the hell had I never been shown this film before? We got in the car. I was waiting in the backseat, cursing every red light. I got in our front door, kicked off my shoes, ran to the TV, found the same channel, and absorbed every minute of it. 

It was the first time I had seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I was instantly obsessed. It wasn’t just the whip or the chases, it was the sense of mystery, of piecing together clues, of treating the world as something to be explored. For me, this wasn’t just entertainment, it was the kind of life blueprint I didn’t know I’d been waiting for.

Later in school, a friend named Stacy and I would talk endlessly about The Last Crusade and try to recreate the Grail Diary by copying the sketches into our notebooks. That wasn’t just fandom; it was my first act of fieldwork and documentation. I wasn’t just reading about history, I was beginning to record it.

Those childhood fascinations gave rise to early forms of documentation: first through drawing, and later through photography. My father had a darkroom set up for black and white photography, and on a class trip to the Toronto Zoo, he gave me a camera and a roll of film. That trip gave me something new: the ability to frame the world as I saw it. That one roll of film showed me how much I loved the process of capturing moments and preserving them.

Even as I got older, I kept adding tools. I discovered storytelling through Dungeons & Dragons. I pursued acting in high school, excited by the idea of embodying different lives and learning about the world through different perspectives. Every new outlet, drawing, photography, performance, and writing was another attempt at seeing, understanding, and sharing the world around me.

One last memory to share. When I was about 13, I saw a man sitting alone on the hood of his Jeep Wrangler, sketching the landscape in a quiet nature area. He had a sketchbook, a pencil, and a look of total presence. He seemed so content, sitting there in tune with his surroundings. He wasn’t showing off; he was just being, observing, and recording. I didn’t know what Ikigai was then, but I knew that man had found it.

Reflections

When you think back to your own childhood, ask yourself:

• What did I naturally gravitate toward before I worried about money or success?
• What toys or games did you gravitate to, and what did they say about how you saw the world?
• Were there people you admired (real or fictional)? What qualities in them spoke to something in you?
• What types of play brought me joy?
• When did I first feel inspired by someone else’s lifestyle or story?

Sometimes your earliest interests hold the most unfiltered version of your purpose.

Closing Thought

In this article, we aren’t just tracing nostalgia; we’re uncovering early truths. Your purpose doesn’t always arrive in lightning bolts. Often, it was there all along, quietly parked in your closet, with explorer jeeps and dreams of jungle ruins. Your job now is to dust off the clues and begin remembering.

Looking Ahead

In the next article, we’ll explore false starts and goal-adjacent detours, those paths that seemed right at the time, but led us further away from our true calling. Every explorer hits dead ends. The trick is learning to read the signs.