LANDING IN IKIGAI
- Studio Tsubo
- Jun 9
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
MAP TO A BALANCED LIFE
I contemplated Ikigai. A Japanese concept so layered it resists a clean translation. "Reason for being" gets you close, but doesn't carry the weight. The diagram does better. Four circles. Four questions. What do you love? What are you good at? What does the world need? What can you be paid for? The concept displayed in a simple matrix of four ideas, a foundation where all things in life align in efficient flow.
At the center, where all four overlap: Ikigai. Not a destination, a convergence. Flow as a life philosophy, mapped to a schematic. This was UX designed for your life. My "design mind" was already at work. Would it be possible to actually take this diagram seriously? Could I map a path to Ikigai, find balance and reach the center where a better life was waiting?
YOUR THING
We all know what our thing is. The thing that we keep returning to throughout our lives like an old friend. Something that we love to do. When it comes to business, the question of what one loves does not have to be entirely beside the point. If one has the luck in life to know what that thing is and it happens to fit into a vocation you love, is it a business plan? Just maybe. Mapping that plan is how we navigate our lives from the very beginning in the design of our individual stories.
For me, the answer to "do you love something?" has been clear for as long as I can remember. Creativity has always been my thing. I have spent my entire life pursuing the craft of being a professional artist, and in that pursuit discovered a world where my skills would always be applied to someone else's subject matter. After all, they were paying for it. Whatever "it" was. It was my proof to myself that art could be my vocation and in fact was. However when applied through the lens of a job, the art was never my own. What if I switched roles and instead, hired myself as the architect, the visionary, making something that I loved into a business plan. Could I dare to try it?
Returning to the diagram reminded me to quiet the commercial art machine within, and remember, what does the world need? Not what the market will pay for. What the world actually needs. This question was the fulcrum that led to the inception of Studio Tsubo. The answer would need to be universal, something that transcended time and culture. Something that anyone could relate to as resoundingly positive. The answer was nature. Everyone loves scenes of natural beauty. Everyone is part of the Biosphere.
I imagined the worlds I had been making for decades. Could the digital realms I'd been sculpting in VR become real? I could design sculptural vessels, continuing the thing that I love. Making scenes of drama, and designs that merge philosophic notions with paths of adventure, inspiring the imagination. I love sending people on a journey, giving them the joy of contemplative discovery. And the thought: what if in that moment, a person could find clarity and peace? Of sending people on a daily walk in the garden. Growing something and thinking about ecology and flow, of nutrients and photosynthesis, of the requirements needed for something to prosper and seeing it all unfold through the doing of it.
THE MISSION
Making life better is where nature and art come together. The ancient tradition of Penjing is the art of the living scene. A tray, a stone, a plant, arranged not as mere decoration but as an evocative diorama. A tale told in miniature, composed with the same intention a painter brings to a canvas. Though, unlike a painting, it grows, it changes, it responds to care and flourishes with a guiding hand.
That ancient tradition has become my platform. Penjing reimagined as fully realized sculpted dioramas with all of the storytelling elements there to be connected by the gardener with the act of planting scenes in miniature.
For urban gardeners who've lost access to land, this is an offer to return. A way to grow a living landscape on a windowsill, a balcony or shelf. Penjing, reinterpreted for the city dweller who still needs a place within nature to experience the reciprocal gift of cultivating something beautiful and in turn be nourished as well.
In aquascape this leverages a different opportunity. Most planted aquatic scenes are fixed. One composition, one moment, locked in place. But what if the scene could shift? What if the planting vessels themselves were modular, ceramic, purpose-built, repositionable, so the aquascape could evolve the way a real scene in nature changes over time. Not a static window into a river, but view of the entire river.
THE PATH
I won't tell you I've arrived. Ikigai isn't a finish line you cross and plant a flag in. The path is still unfolding. But somewhere in the discovery of it all, something has become clear. The adventure is only just beginning. Not a place to reach, but a recognition that Ikigai is the path itself.