Ikigai needs a fire.

I’m ok, then I’m not. It’s a pendulum swing, either side of which only serves to magnify the other.

The wars. The pain. The suffering. The agendas. The separation. The anger. The manipulation. The algorithm.

The world feels heavier by the day, like it’s tipping under the weight of endless crises. Crisis upon crisis upon crisis.

In every direction, battered by images and headlines — wars, environmental ruin, mental health shadows, violence, famine, political arrogance — a poly-crisis, a world thrashing under the hand of its own making.

And for many of us, especially those who share a history with lands torn by conflict, these waves of chaos hit deeper.

We’re watching destruction unfold live, bombarded by algorithms that echo our worst fears, amplifying that feeling of helplessness.

Three nights running; nightmares. Sweats and screams.

Helpless. Hopeless. Hapless.

Hope.

Amidst the ruin exists a thread — one that’s delicate, fierce, and ours to hold.

It’s the will to create.

Angry? Create.

Despair? Create.

Fury? Create.

Whatever the feeling, create.

For humanity’s sake, create.

Create, build, make.

Every product, every piece of art, every idea, every shared thought becomes an act of resistance, a counterforce to destruction. Creation isn’t just expression; it’s rebellion. It’s an act of refusing to sit still while self-interest fractures the world around us.

Join the protest, march in the streets, but carry your fire beyond the crowd.

Create something that matters.

Make something that matters.

Launch something that matters.

Bring insight, love, pain, joy — bring it all, and turn it into something that transcends the anger, fear, and sadness that choke us. Let your work penetrate where screams can’t, let it trigger what apathy has numbed.

Because creation is power.

Creation is unfuckwithable.

Thank god for artists.

Thank god for art.

Thank god for you.

We have a mythic propensity, a cosmological instinct to make something out of nothing. In the middle of chaos, we’re asked to participate — to engage creatively with the changes and crises sweeping across the earth. Thanks Michael Meade, he said it best: “The awakened human soul becomes the extra quantity and uniquely living quality needed to help tip the balance of the world away from destruction and toward ongoing creation.”

F.Ikigai

That’s not a typo.

This isn’t the serene path of ikigai, the Japanese concept of living a meaningful life. It’s ikigai forged in fire and fury, a purpose that withstands everything thrown at it.

To live with meaning isn’t just to find balance — it’s to make one. This is about living with a purpose so fierce that no amount of chaos, no act of violence, no crisis of spirit can shake it.

Add fury, add ferocity, add fuuuuuck to the Ikigai. Fikigai. Purpose infused with fury. That’s where change happens.

Namaste won’t cut it.

Create something unstoppable. Shape the world through your art, build what you wish existed, show what needs to be seen, speak what has been silenced. Art, creation, is a movement all its own — the kind that doesn’t fade with the evening news or get buried under algorithms. It’s eternal, rising from the ashes again and again, outliving everything that seeks to silence it.

This is the final call: If you have a fire inside, bring it to life. Make something out of nothing. In the darkest times, be a force that can’t be ignored.

Thank god for artists.

Thank god for art.

Thank god for you.

— — —

I wrote this piece, perhaps it’s self indulgent, perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s art, but that’s decided by the eye of the beholder.

It’s Oh So Quiet.

Three mornings straight,

I wake in a state,

Nightmares of the East,

where the people meet fate.

Frozen like stone,

Medusa’s touch,

I watch them fall—

can’t do much.

Dying before me,

a helpless scene,

as I scroll past the echoes,

lost in the screen.

Algorithm feeding high,

African turmoil, silent cries,

The Amazon burns,

meat piles high

Don’t see can’t see what is real,

only what’s fed.

The algorithm.

Here I sit, in Western embrace,

drifting a world’s forgotten grace.

I sit in peace, yet peace feels wrong,

while the bombs keep dropping like a pop song.

Safe in my cage, where the noise is loud

but the heart is hollow, and the mind’s a cloud.

I burn with a hunger,

I ache for a cause—

to turn this numbness into something raw.

Zebras and Onions,

weaving worlds to fight fog,

painting in pixels, in code, light and song.

And yet the silence—it screams,

the world distracts with endless streams,

of content, but where’s the heat?

Where’s the fire, the fight, the beat?

I’d rather face the storm,

I’d rather feel the rain,

than sit in this quiet,

this painless drain.

To friends who’ve called,

I thank you for the sound,

but the world—it spins without a sound.

I hear silence.

I hear distraction.

I’d rather commune with an opponent

than with indifference and its hollow action.

— — —

Thank you for reading this far, and for indulging me. I’m not buying into it, not buying into the algorithm tricking me into believing I’m powerless. I’m not. You’re not.

Thank God for Artists.

Thank God for Art.

Thank God for YOU.