Translator: Risa Horiuchi Reviewer: Riaki Poništ
Hello, everyone.
My name is Iba.
I won't be dancing upside down today,
but I do want to share an idea with all of you.
What am I going to talk about today?
I would like to talk about the ways
that we can create a happy future for ourselves.
Kind of like magic, isn't it?
I have been doing research lately,
and would like to share my results.
So,
My research is advanced and a bit unusual, but it's easy for anyone to do.
You can do this with your family when you go home today.
You can even do this on your commute home.
While it's fairly easy,
I feel that it is an important activity which is worth sharing here.
Today,
my presentation focuses on how to create your future.
So, the future.
In Japanese, we write it as "hasn't arrived yet."
Although it's important to live in the present,
if we think about it, the future is always ahead of us.
That means that every day, we are living our future.
Until we die, each day becomes the future actualized.
But, when we're talking to our friends, family, or co-workers,
when we talk to all of these people,
we talk less about the future and more about the past or the present.
That said, thinking about the future is very important.
When I think about the future, I am reminded of the words
that Alan Kay once said.
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Tomorrow will still come regardless of what you do tonight.
The future will come.
But, instead of becoming a bystander in your own life
and letting the future come when it may,
you need to create it, for you.
That is Alan Kay's message.
So Alan Kay is called "the father of personal computers."
We often use laptops at home, don't we?
Decades ago, computers were not for individual use.
Computers used to be as large as a room
and were dedicated to the military or to scientific studies.
Alan Kay is one of the people who envisioned a future
where the computer is available for individual use,
allowing us to express ourselves or learn something new.
He said there are many more potential uses for the computer
such as communication
and worked towards making that vision come true.
"Changing society" is a discussion too broad for today.
Instead, let's ask ourselves, "How can we live our best lives?"
or "How can my family be happier?"
Asking these kinds of questions is something we all know we need to do.
Our future can go in a positive or a negative direction
or it can go in a mediocre direction.
So in our everyday lives,
we are trying the best we can do towards a happier future
while considering different options.
But the word "happiness" is quite vague.
Of course, we all want a happy future.
Yet the definition of happiness varies from person to person.
It can depend on the phase a person is going through.
So happiness can be ambiguous.
If we try to describe happiness with some cliched catchphrase or slogan,
it wouldn't really define happiness.
It would only partially define it.
So, something as vague and as ambiguous as happiness
is difficult for one person to concretize.
But when you are trying to do that with your family
or with your group of friends,
or in your neighborhood or workplace,
you need to be aware of what a happy future means to you all
when working towards making it come true.
Then, since happiness is so vague and everyone has their own ideas,
things can get a bit complicated.
People may disagree with each other.
They may get frustrated with others and blame each other,
leading to arguments or ruining their relationships,
which don't help with achieving their common goals.
So the idea I want to share with you today -
the question I want to ask you is,
what kind of future would make you happy?
Can you put that into words?
Putting thoughts into words is easy. You can do this anywhere.
Nothing fancy.
Write down your ideas as they naturally come to mind.
When you do this, I bet it will be more than just one word.
By putting into words
what kind of future you want and what makes you happy
and sharing your ideas with other people,
you can begin to imagine
all of your future possibilities, what a happy future looks like and so on.
If you are artistic, you can draw your ideas.
You can also use another medium.
But the good thing about words is that you don't need a particular tool.
You can use them in everyday conversations.
You can keep them in mind and take them anywhere.
So what I want to share with you is,
how to use language to define and shape your happiness.
If this is too abstract, it may help to ask specific questions.
When I was with my family,
I asked the kids, "When are you happy?"
The point is that when you try to describe your happiness,
it's helpful to ask yourself and the people around you,
"When are you happy?"
From there, you find a variety of answers.
So when I asked the kids, "When are you happiest?"
I got some answers:
For one, "I really like shopping together."
It's just grocery shopping, but the kids said they found it fun.
I wasn't expecting that answer.
Also, "going on a car ride."
Well, I wasn't surprised by this.
Going on a vacation or a day trip with the family is definitely fun.
"Watching TV with dad" was another answer.
This is because I'm usually busy with research in the evening,
so I don't watch much TV with my family.
So this answer brought home to me how they enjoy sharing that experience.
When I looked at all of these answers, I found a common theme.
I saw that spending time with family and doing things together
makes us really happy.
That's what the kids told me, and I agree with them.
So I wrote down "being with my family."
Then I noticed something.
When I'm planning for the weekend, for example,
I now consciously choose to spend time with my family
and go on from there.
Of course, family isn't the only thing that makes you happy.
There are other things too.
Visiting a fun place, eating delicious food,
learning new things, like reading a new book, visiting different places.
These things can also make you happy.
So there are many components that we are dealing with here.
If we take only one, such as "being with family,"
that alone isn't enough.
We may find enjoyment in experiencing new places.
We may encounter different things all at once or at different times.
All of these as a whole form the shapes of happiness,
so choose the words that evoke that reaction,
or define the shapes of our happiness.
You can't really describe happiness in shapes or define it with one word.
You need to to create your own definition of happiness
using different words of your own, looking at different aspects.
These examples may be obvious.
The words aren't particularly special; on the contrary, they are quite obvious.
Nevertheless, they are meaningful to you because they are yours.
Only you can create words that define your own happiness.
Make it your own word and use it.
That is the first step you need to take
to start the crafting of your future happiness.
Shaping and defining what makes you happy
is the key to a happy future.
Now, I just talked about my research with my family as an example.
To live in our own way, we need to ask questions like:
What does it mean to be yourself? What makes you happy?
What do you feel is important to you?
These are the topics that we ponder and discuss
in the workshops that I organize so that we can discover our true wishes.
Here are some photos from the one held in Tokyo last week.
I worked with teens and adults. They explored what being oneself meant.
You can think about this by yourself,
but the point of this workshop was to exchange ideas with other people.
I was in Brazil the week before.
Brazil is on the opposite side of the Earth.
Opposite to Japan.
I held the same workshop in Brazil.
It was summer there.
They discussed the questions: "What does it mean to be myself?"
"What's important to me?" "What does happiness mean to me?"
We can see their ideas in these photos,
This is about being yourself.
Creating the future that you think is ideal for you
is not just about your personal values.
It can be about your office.
We can discuss what kind of workplace would be ideal for us.
That ideal can be created in words.
These are actual office workers talking about their ideal work space
and how it would make them happy.
Then, they designed one on the bottom right.
This is one example where I facilitate making ideals into reality.
Also, we are trying to build a new cafe.
We are talking to cafe customers and people who provide the service,
asking them what the cafe of their dreams look like.
Using their feedback, we are now working on creating it,
and we plan to open it next year.
Another example is emerging shared spaces called Future Centers,
which are meeting places to discuss a better future
and are increasingly popular in different cities in Japan.
These are meetings held in some of these spaces
where participants discussed things like,
what tomorrow's agriculture could look like,
how to improve local agriculture,
and what kind of future there can be for working mothers.
They came up with some 60 new phrases of their own for tomorrow's agriculture,
which describe their ideal futures,
Mothers created 50-60 new phrases representing new ways for them
to have a career while raising kids.
These discussions were part of my study.
These are from a workshop held in the United States In September.
We did a collaborative brainstorming
on how to develop the participants' professional fields.
They came up with 30-40 ideas put into their own words.
One of the participants wanted to apply one idea right away.
He declared quite ceremoniously, "The future starts now!"
and he started putting it in practice.
When you are figuring out your ideals, you don't usually describe them.
or you don't always have time to think them over.
You try to solve immediate problems or learn from your past experiences.
They tend to dominate your attention,
so it's hard to think about what you want, what your ideals are,
what makes you happy
as you don't have the time or the opportunity in your daily life.
So making the time to talk and put your ideas into words helps.
In doing this, others will understand and share your ideas.
That also helps you keep your ideas in mind for tomorrow or much later.
This is what I wanted to talk about today.
So let's go over the benefits of this practice I've just introduced.
Vague images of your future don't have to stay that way.
You can clarify the images using five to ten words,
which you can then use, to describe your ideals with.
With a clear vision,
you can involve people around you towards the same goal
and figure out what you need to do.
Another benefit is that it makes it easy to remember your ideas.
For example, "being with family" is easy to keep in mind.
No technical terms there.
You can remember these words easily since you created them by yourself.
You can also share those words with others in conversations.
You can talk about your ideas anywhere: at a cafe or at home during dinner.
You can use words at any time.
These are some of the benefits of putting your ideas into words.
Finally, I want to discuss children as an example.
At the Tokyo Community School, the kids study all kinds of things.
It is a school where the kids work on projects
designed for creative thinking.
Here, the kids wrote about the concepts that they feel are important to them.
The result was "The Power of Kids," a hand-written booklet.
Here are two important things from the booklet.
One is, "What bends can also spread."
When you're creating ideas, you can feel stuck.
When things seem to be going poorly, your ideas begin to have potential.
A good idea doesn't just come to you.
It's when you struggle with an idea that you start to see its actual shape.
That's what they mean by "What bends can also spread."
This was one of the things that they highly valued.
They will remember this as something they experienced growing up,
and they will keep it in mind even after they become adults.
As adults, they might find a different expression,
but a quote like this will stick with them.
Next: "What's strange is good."
This is my favorite expression: "What's strange is good."
When you compare something as "normal" and "abnormal,"
you tend to avoid things that look strange and feel tempted to settle for normal,
but strange doesn't only mean unusual.
It can mean something novel or interesting.
It's not that we prefer the strange just for a laugh,
but that we value ideas that are novel and different.
That was the concept behind this expression.
This is what I mean by using words
to find out our values and our ideals for a happy future.
On your way home, or after you get home,
try reflecting on what we discussed today.
Ask yourself, "When am I happiest?"
Talk about it with your family, colleagues and friends.
"When am I happy?"
"What is my ideal situation?" "What makes me happy?"
"What are my values?"
Start asking these questions and put the answers into words.
Name the shape of your happiness and name each part of that shape.
Naming is important.
There are a lot of definitions in our dictionaries.
So many adjectives and verbs.
But there are very few words that define our own individual dreams,
neither in Japanese nor in English.
So build your own dictionary of words to describe and shape your own future.
That is the main idea that I would like you to take home.
I encourage you to ask yourself what makes you happy
and talk about it with your family and friends.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)