In this video, Nick Kemp explores the profound connection between shared compassion and ikigai, referencing the work of Mieko Kamiya. Nick discusses how fear often triggers our fight-or-flight response, causing us to avoid difficult situations or lash out in blame. However, beneath that fear lies a deeper need for acceptance and love, which can be nurtured through compassion.
Ikigai can be this dominance
Nick: In your book, there are these parallels to Mieko Kamiya's work, who I like to think of as the mother of ikigai. And there's this quote from Nitobe: "Beneath the instinct to fight there lurks a divine instinct to love." And so I think on this theme, when we have these difficult situations, or interpersonal problems, we have this sense of fear, which can turn on I a flight or fight mode. And I guess, flight means avoidance, we don't want to deal with it.
So we don't have the conversation, or fight—we blame the person or we maybe we go about them and blame them. So fear really seems to bring out the worst in us, and often brings out this desire to fight.
Yet as Nitobe identified, we do have this instinct to love or feel loved, and that's what Kamiya wrote about: for some people, ikigai can be this dominance, and they want to dominate people, because they develop a sense of power. And that becomes a source of ikigai. And really, underneath it all, they just want to be accepted and loved. And that can only come through with this idea of a shared compassion.