Steven Munatones said, “When I talk with and meet open water swimmers around the world, I sense the Japanese concept of ikigai is alive and well.
Ikigai (生き甲斐) is a Japanese concept meaning a reason for being. So many swimmers have their own ikigai; it can be ice swimming, cold swimming, or ecoswims. Others are into marathon swimming and channel swimming. It doesn’t even have to be for competition or an offical English Channel crossing.
Some simply love swimming in the ocean; others prefer swimming in lakes. Others love serving as an escort kayaker or a pilot or an observer, coach, or mentor. Others enjoy organizing events, camps, clinics, tours, swimming holidays, or celebratory dinners.
It was quite early that I understood that open water swimming was one of my ikigai. My parents first took me to Santa Monica Beach in Santa Monica before I was a week old. I spent many weeks crawling on the sand and touch the water before I could stand or walk. That initial introduction to the ocean must have been an inherently strong incentive for my ikigai.
I loved watching the Catalina Channel swimmers in the 1970’s. I would watch them from the Palos Verdes Peninsula and wonder not only how far they had to swim, but also what were they looking at in the depths of the Pacific.
I loved writing for Swimming World Magazine in the 1980’s. Writing about Lynne Cox and Philip Rush, Paul Asmuth and Shelley Taylor-Smith. I loved organizing the Waikiki Roughwater Swim and competing in the Maui Channel Swim.
I loved pioneering my own swims from Okinawa to Hokkaido in Japan in the 1990’s, learning more about how to organize expeditions and recruit teams of pilots and crew members.
I loved writing and promoting the early Olympic marathon swimming heroes in the 2000’s, interviewing Maarten van der Weijden, Larisa Ilchenko, Keri-Anne Payne, Thomas Lurz, and others. I loved making the painstaking effort of creating the first International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame website and researching all the thousands of pages of the early Openwaterpedia platform.
I loved traveling from Peitermaritzburg in South Africa to cover the aQuelle Midmar Mile, to Burghausen in Germany to cover the Ice Swimming Aqua Sphere World Championships, and to Marathon in Greece to cover the Special Olympics World Summer Games. Young and old, fast and slower, professional and amateur, male and female, physically and mentally disabled; it is always a joy to learn about and from swimmers from around the world.“
Dan Buettner is an American National Geographic Fellow, explorer, entrepreneur, and New York Times-bestselling author of the Blue Zones. His Netflix series, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, explores and explains how five communities around the world where people live extraordinarily long and vibrant lives (i.e., Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Loma Linda in California, the Greek island Ikaria and Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula).
Munatones connects the dots between his ikigai and the Japanese sense of ikigai in Okinawa that Buettner addresses in his Netflix series. “I have swum many times in Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan. The archipelago is near Taiwan. The waters are beautiful and challenging with hundreds of islands, some uninhabited and each dotted with coral reefs. There is plenty of marine life, especially hammerhead sharks around the island of Yonaguni [see photo above].
When I proposed new swims between Ishigaki Island and Iriomote Island and Taketomi Island or around Yonaguni Island, the local people jumped at the opportunity. They never hesitated and questioned why I wanted to pioneer these swims. They just asked how they could help or be a part of this journey.
Before, during and after each swim, I met hundreds of Okinawa residents and volunteers from escort pilots to shark divers whose love of the ocean and passion for what they did in life was always profoundly impressive. They supported me with their genuine smiles; they helped me with their immense amount of knowledge; they shared with me their heartfelt fervor and boundless energy. I always wondered why.“
They simply enbodied and profoundly breathed in their daily lives the Japanese concept of ikigai.
© 2023 Daily News of Open Water Swimming
“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“