A few days ago, I came across an interview with Professor Xiang Biao, a social anthropologist whose work I follow closely. During the conversation, he brought up a term that he has talked about before, but one that feels more relevant to me now than ever: Suspension.
He described it as a way of living that so many of us fall into without even realizing it. It’s that familiar feeling where our days are packed with endless tasks, yet we feel completely disconnected from what we are actually doing. We run from morning until night, driven by a constant anxiety that if we don’t keep up, we’ll be left behind. Deep down, we treat the present moment as nothing more than a temporary bridge—a stepping stone we have to endure just to reach some imagined, secure future.
The present gets reduced to mere noise and waiting room time—something to be managed, optimized, or gotten through, rather than actually lived.
Reading his words didn’t feel like studying an academic paper; it felt like looking at a plain description of my own days. It’s a state I know far too well: being constantly in motion, yet feeling entirely suspended in midair, completely detached from the ground beneath our feet.
Professor Xiang Biao on “Suspension” and the Loss of Presence
Professor Xiang Biao is one of the most internationally renowned anthropologists working today. After entering the Sociology Department at Peking University in 1992, he earned his doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Oxford in 2003 and became an Oxford professor in 2015. He currently serves as Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. Through his books and conversations, such as Self as Method and Hello, Stranger, he has built a reputation for using plain, accessible language to dissect complex social realities.
In his recent interview with Lianhe Zaobao (Singapore), Professor Xiang revisited several ideas that resonate deeply with anyone feeling overwhelmed today. He spoke about the trap of meritocracy—how society pushes us to measure everything on a vertical ladder, where success is justified and failure is blamed entirely on individual effort. He reflected on how AI might actually force us to live more like human beings, pushing us away from robotic, repetitive work and toward care, creativity, and connection. And he warned us about the “disappearance of the nearby,” noting how we often know more about distant world events on our phones than about the people sharing our elevator or the streets outside our doors.
Yet, among all these insights, the concept that sits at the very center of his diagnosis—and the one that stays with me most—is Suspension.
Suspension is not just about having a busy schedule. It describes a deeper psychological state where we feel as if our lives are dangling in midair. We throw ourselves into jobs, tasks, and endless routines, not because we care about the work itself, but because we are terrified of falling behind. We treat the present moment as a cost to be paid, an uncomfortable phase we just need to survive so we can reach some imagined stability down the road.
When we live in suspension, time loses its rhythm and space loses its texture. We become transients in our own lives, endlessly preparing to live, but never actually living.
Living in My Own “Suspension”
For a long time, I lived in that exact state without knowing there was a word for it.
Looking back at my own past, especially over the last ten years, my daily life was driven by a persistent background panic. I was terrified of being left behind while everyone else seemed to be sprinting ahead. I watched markets shift, trends pop up, and economic waves roll through, always feeling this pressure that I needed to catch the right wave just to secure my future.
So I threw myself into the rush. I spent years chasing whatever promised quick returns or long-term safety, constantly trying to optimize my routine, my skills, and my career. But the truth was, I wasn’t naturally wired for most of those pursuits. I forced myself into molds that didn’t fit my nature, ignoring what I actually loved—observation, reading, writing, and taking photographs. I set those aside simply because I convinced myself they weren’t productive enough.
I turned my days into what Professor Xiang Biao calls a “work hole”. I treated every present moment as a cost—an uncomfortable period of grinding that I had to endure just to reach some imaginary finish line where I’d finally feel safe.
The result wasn’t security; it was total optimization fatigue and burnout. I was running as fast as I could, yet I felt like my feet never actually touched the ground. I was physically going through the motions of life, but mentally, I was entirely suspended in midair.
Looking for “Ikigai”: Beyond the Venn Diagram
When you reach that level of exhaustion, you realize that adding another productivity hack or running faster isn’t going to save you. You start looking for a different way to live—a way to land back on solid ground.
That was when I began thinking more deeply about the concept of Ikigai(いきがい).
If you search for Ikigai online, you’ll almost certainly run into that famous Venn diagram—the one with four overlapping circles representing what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. In Western culture, it has been packaged as the ultimate career optimization tool, a chart to help you build the perfect, highly profitable, purpose-driven life.
There is an obvious irony in that. A concept meant to help people slow down has been turned into another high-stakes optimization project—just another item on our endless self-improvement to-do list.
Rule-bound charts like that only fuel more suspension. They make us feel that unless our daily actions serve some grand purpose or generate measurable value, they aren’t worth our time.
In its native Japanese context, however, Ikigai is far simpler and much more humble. At its core, it isn’t a career matrix or an ambitious life plan, but a philosophy of daily presence—a micro-art of living.
It is simply “that which makes life worth living” in the small, ordinary moments. It is the aroma of morning coffee, the tactile feeling of pen on paper, watching light move across the wall, or taking a single photograph. It is not an engine to speed you up; it is an anchor that makes you slow down, drop the need to prove yourself, and fully inhabit right now.
What the Tao Te Ching Taught Me About Finding Ikigai
This simple, grounded view of Ikigai connects directly with a line from Chapter 48 of the Tao Te Ching that I often return to:
Modern culture is built entirely on acquisition—what Lao Tzu calls Ri Yi (日益). We collect new goals, optimize our schedules, and track our habits, always believing that peace will come once we add one more achievement to our lives. But living in suspension is often the direct result of having too much clutter in our minds—too many goals that were never ours to begin with.
The Tao Te Ching offers the opposite path: Ri Sun (日損), the practice of subtraction.
Subtraction isn’t about giving up on life or becoming passive. It simply means dropping the fear of falling behind, shedding the need to prove your worth through constant hustle, and releasing the expectation that every hour must produce measurable value.
This is where the Tao meets Ikigai. Both remind us of Pu (樸)—the uncarved block, which is really about getting back to who we were before we started trying so hard to fix ourselves. You don’t need to craft a complex identity or force yourself into a Venn diagram just to earn the right to exist.
When you stop trying to fix or upgrade every moment, you clear away the noise. What remains is the simple texture of what is already right in front of you—a slow morning, a warm drink, or a clear breath. That natural presence isn’t something we have to hunt for down the road; it’s what has been waiting for us all along.
Landing Back on Solid Ground: Lessons from a Single Petal
To bring ourselves out of suspension, we don’t need to quit our job or move to a cabin in the woods. The shift happens in how we pay attention to what is already around us.
For me, photography became my personal practice of landing back on solid ground. When you look at a plant through a lens, the noise of the world completely disappears. I am not thinking about market trends, career milestones, or tomorrow’s schedule. I’m forced to focus on one tiny space, right here, right now.
Looking closely at a dried botanical subject, you begin to see details that are usually ignored. You notice the paper-thin veins in a withered petal, the folds formed by time, and the shift of browns and golds.
In a culture that prizes fresh perfection and constant renewal, a fading blossom looks useless. But through a close lens, its dried edges hold a raw, unvarnished texture—the very idea of Pu and the spirit of Ikigai. It doesn’t apologize for fading; it just exists as it is.
You don’t have to pick up a camera to practice this. You can find that same sense of presence while brewing tea, listening to water run, or sitting with a pet. It’s simply about giving ourselves permission to stop optimizing every minute, and allowing ourselves to be entirely where our bodies are.
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