“You can’t snow me with your French, Curmudge. You taught me months ago that raison d’être means ‘reason for being’ or ‘sense of purpose.’ It’s like my cat’s raison d’être is sleeping.”
“We’re going to talk about people, Jaded Julie, not lazy cats. So instead of raison d’être, we’ll use a somewhat comparable Japanese word, ikigai (pronounced ee-ki-guy). It refers to people’s feeling that their lives are valuable (1), and anyway, everything sounds more dignified spoken in Japanese.”
“I always have to ask, ‘What does this subject have to do with Lean in health care?’“
“The only connection with Lean is that ikigai is Japanese. But our subject is gerontology, which deals with the health and well-being of older people. The link is tenuous, but it’ll do until something better comes along. So let’s begin our discussion with a question: What’s an easy way to bring about the premature demise of an older, dedicated worker?”
“That’s a simple one, Curmudge. Unless the guy is an avid golfer, all you have to do is take away his job. For many people their profession is their identity. When their profession goes, their reason for being goes too. I guess the Japanese would say that their ikigai is in the tank.”
“That’s a good example, Julie, but it’s a mighty sad story anywhere in the world. To address that and other problems of aging, the Japanese have established their Silver Human Resource Center (SHRC) program which provides part-time, paid employment to retirement-aged men and women. In studies of the program’s effectiveness, Weiss et al. found that actively working at an SHRC job was associated with greater well-being (ikigai); the response was enhanced with men who had previous volunteering experience (2). Shirai et al. concluded that ‘recognition of life change through obtaining work may enhance ikigai among people who wish to engage in productive activities in the later stages of life’ (3).”
“That sounds pretty good. Perhaps the Japanese can teach us something other than the Toyota Production System. What can be done in the U.S.?”
“I read someplace that the U.S. leads the world in charitable giving. Maybe we are also as generous with our time as volunteers. Teaching children to read, feeding the homeless, serving as host parents for Rotary international exchange students; the opportunities to serve in the Valley are almost limitless. And of course, here in the hospital there are over 250 volunteers serving in 57 different assignments.”
“I get it, Curmudge. When we focus on helping others, we subconsciously raise our own ikigai. Of course it’s not subconscious with you because you just wrote it.”
“I doesn’t matter, Julie, as long as one enjoys what he or she is doing and does it with enthusiasm.”
“Ultimately each of you senior-citizen volunteers will have to face the Grim Reaper who will bring your service to an end.”
“Jaded Julie, when that happens to me I’ll just say, ‘Wait a minute, old Guy with Scythe, I have just a few more words to write.’”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
(1) Nakanishi, N. ‘Ikigai’ in older Japanese people. (1999)
http://ageing.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/28/3/323.pdf
(2) Weiss, R.S., et al. Japan’s silver human resource centers and participant well-being. (2005)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15870967?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayout.PPMCAppController.PPMCArticlePage.PPMCPubmedRA&linkpos=1
(3) Shirai, K. Factors associated with "Ikigai" among members of a public temporary employment agency for seniors. (2006) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1450260/
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