Quote of the day from Mieko Kamiya, the mother of ikigai: “We did not create morning…the meaning of life is like morning”
Mieko Kamiya is widely remembered as the mother of vital psychology, thanks to best-selling books by Hector Garcia and Francesc Iralles. Mieko Kamiya was born in Japan in 1914. She grew up in an intellectually rich environment and lived for a time in Switzerland and the United States. She spoke multiple languages and eventually became a psychiatrist, researcher and translator.Her life’s work was her time treating patients with Hansen’s disease (commonly known as leprosy) at the Nagashima Sanitarium in Japan. At the time, people affected by leprosy faced severe social stigma, forced isolation, and painful physical torture. They are cut off from their families, careers, and the normal flow of society. Kamiya dedicated her medical career to understanding how to find a reason to continue living when everything we hold dear is taken away from us.These experiences led her to write her seminal book Ikigai-ni-tsuite (On the Meaning of Life or About Ikigai) in 1966. Long before Western self-help books turned ikigai into a career chart or business framework, Kamiya studied it as a psychological reality. She explores what makes life worthwhile, inside and out. Quotes about mornings come directly from a deep understanding of human survival, recovery, and daily hope.Ikigai means the purpose of life. Kamiya explains this brilliantly, writing:“When we wake up from sleep, we are greeted by morning. We do not create morning; it somehow gives us the opportunity to live a new day. We wake up and discover morning. The meaning of life is like morning.”
The purpose of life is waiting to be discovered
Kamiya compares us to the morning and frees us from pursuing our goals. It’s there. It remains to be seen, to be discovered. Just like you don’t have to let the sun rise, you don’t have to invent your life’s purpose. It is consistent with your life.The citation states that morning “somehow gives us the chance to live another day.” This observation is filled with deep humility. Humans like to feel in control. We want to believe that our efforts determine our reality. However, no matter how rich, powerful, or smart a person is, no one can force a new day to appear.By describing morning as something that comes naturally, Kamiya emphasizes that life itself is an unearned gift. This is an opportunity provided to us without any prior transaction. When you see the day as something you did not create, your attitude shifts from demanding to grateful. You stop seeing time as something you deserve and start seeing it as a new canvas for your experiences.For patients treated at Kamiya, long-term goals and grand visions of the future are often impossible due to illness and limitations. If meaning requires the realization of great ambitions, these patients will fall into utter despair.Compare the meaning of life to the purpose of this morning. Morning represents the daily reset. No matter how bad yesterday was, no matter how much you failed, no matter how much pain you suffered, the day before will eventually be over. The dawn brings a quiet, unannounced restart. It gives you twenty-four new hours to breathe, feel the warmth of the sun, connect with another person, or find a tiny reason to keep going. Meaning doesn’t have to solve your entire life at once; it just needs to step into the day that has just arrived.This statement is at the core of Kamiya’s original ikigai theory. She divides ikigai into two concepts: the source of meaning and the actual feeling of meaning, which she calls ikigai-kan.Morning is a source. Waking up, noticing the light, and being happy to see it, is ikigai-kan. Kamia proves that true fulfillment does not lie in great achievements or external recognition. Rather, it exists in the quiet awareness of life itself.
