What is the meaning of life? How do we find our purpose? The answers to these questions will only be revealed in your quest to answer them.
Kurosawa’s 1952 film, Ikiru, is about an older government worker who has spent his life shuffling papers around the office. After a 30 year long career, he has money to blow, and the title of Chief has been added to his name, but when he is diagnosed with cancer he realizes he has no purpose. His job was once security as he raised his son. Now that his boy is grown, that purpose is finished and his son shows him no gratitude, only demanding to be given the property rights to the house.
Faced with the fact that he has never really lived life, he sets out to find meaning. First he goes around town spending money on women and partying. Then he hangs around a younger former coworker to observe her youth, to see what living is for the young. She is working in a toy factory and when he goes to visit her, she becomes annoyed with him hanging on to her, and tells him to “Go make something!”
You can guess the ending of the film. The old man spends his dying days making something worthy and he achieves a beautiful outcome. He dies, while his legacy is picked apart by the living, who can’t understand why the old man did what he did.
The way Kurosawa tells this timeless story is brilliant. No matter what time period, or from what culture, we can all understand the character’s struggle with the meaning of life. Also, whatever brings a person meaning is going to be individual to that person, and may not be understood by all. There will always be detractors. Even when the endeavor is making your own life, there will always be someone criticizing that you’re not living it correctly.
Going through the motions, playing it safe, and just trying to get approval from all is empty.
Invest your care and passion into making something. The things you make are worthy and meaningful, whether you are making art, making a family, making a meal for someone who needs to eat, making jokes for people who need to laugh, or building a city for people who need a place to live and work. Your creations can lead to connection, which only make more meaning and more beauty in the world.
