Ichigo Ichie - Japanese idiom describing a concept that an occurrence or event happens only once in a lifetime. It is unrepeatable, because it will never be the same again.

This Japanese phrase captures life’s encounter very fairly I feel. If you make the same dinner over and over again, it will never taste exactly the same, even if you’re following recipe to the t. If you repeat a friendly encounter with the exact same group of people, the conversations will never be the same as before.

‘The Book of Ichigo Ichie’ comes from the same author who introduced me to the concept of Ikigai, on the topic of which you can read here. It aims to help the reader understand that every moment in our lives happens only ones. It teaches to be mindful of it as it happens, not to dwell on the past and not to feel anxious about the future. It talks about importance of trying and understand the impermanence of things.

While I enjoy the concept explored within this book, I had an awful trouble with the examples used to demonstrate it. There was too much focus on some of them, such as Steve Job’s meditation journey. I had hoped for a general overview of the concept and non-general, well rounded ideas.
Instead, I was forced to listen to someone talk about someone else to link back to the original point. If I wanted to learn about Steve’s experience, I would have listed to his autobiography or his own accounts of it. If the authors felled compelled to include real-life examples, I wish they were their personal ones instead.

The more I listed to this audiobook, the more dissociated I became with the content introduced as part of it, although I did enjoy the primary principal of Ichigo Ichie and its message.