郎朗 (Lang Lang)

Lang Lang is a famous Chinese pianist who has performed with orchestras around the World, who was born on 14th June 1982. He is the first Chinese pianist by the Berlin Philharmonic. He is proof of how far you can go if you follow your passion throughout your life. Now here I'm only going to talk about how he found his Ikigai. To find out about his whole life story, you can buy this book - https://www.amazon.in/Journey-Thousand-Miles-My-Story/dp/0385524579

He discovered his passion when he was just two years old. He was motivated to learn the piano by a Tom and Jerry episode - The Cat Concerto , which features Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. in the episode, the scene comes where Tom is giving a piano recital in front of a huge audience with Jerry sleeping in the piano. Apart from all that battling of Tom and Jerry, the piece of music that was being played by Jerry despite all those difficulties, amazed Lang the most.

He gained a passion for music and decided that he wanted to take piano lessons, which he started to tale from the age of three.

When he was nine, he auditioned for the most prestigious music school in the capital of China: Beijing's Central Conservatory. Sadly, he was turned down by one of the tutors as they said he "lacked talent".

Finding out about his disappointment, a music teacher of his school tries to cheer him up by asking him to play one of the movements of the piece after putting a score of Mozart on the piano. This helped Lang to gain his confidence to give a second audition. He was still nine when he succeeded into getting into the Conservatory. From then on, he made wonderful progress and won in many international competitions, that made him such a famous Chinese pianist.

How cool it is to discover your ikigai at the age of two! Although some of you might not have found your ikigai yet, but I'm sure you'll find it when the time is right.