The Courage to be Happy: True Contentment Is In Your Power

by Ichiro Kishimi

In other words, we are not creatures who are determined by past events. Rather, we determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those events.

It is enough to know ‘you who are in front of me’, and in principle there is no way for me to know ‘the past you’. I repeat, the past does not exist. The past you speak of is nothing more than a story skilfully compiled by ‘you now’.

‘In a quarrel both parties are to blame.’

PHILOSOPHER: If human legs were as fast as horses’, the horse-drawn carriage would never have been invented and probably not the motor vehicle, either. If we could fly like birds, the aeroplane would never have been invented. If we had fur like a polar bear, winter clothing would never have been invented, and if we could swim like dolphins, there would never have been a need for boats or marine compasses, either. Civilisation is a product of the need to compensate for the biological weakness of the human being, and the history of the human race is the history of its triumphing over its inferiority.

it is due to that weakness that humans create communities and live in relationships of cooperation. Ever since the hunter-gatherer age, we have lived in groups and cooperated with our comrades in hunting animals and raising children. It isn’t that we wanted to cooperate with each other. It is that we were weak, so desperately weak, that we could not live separately.

Just as one would not imagine a turtle without its shell, or a giraffe with a short neck, there is no such thing as a human being who is completely cut off from other people. Community feeling is not something that is attained, but something that one digs up from within oneself,

Human beings are physically weak. But the human mind is second to none, much stronger than that of any other animal.

What person today would not take being told ‘You are a common, ordinary human being’ as an insult? What person would be comforted by hearing ‘That’s individuality, too,’ and take you seriously? PHILOSOPHER: If you feel insulted by these words, you are probably still trying to be a ‘special me’. Consequently, you seek approval from others. Consequently, you seek to gain admiration and draw attention and continue to live within the framework of problem behaviour. YOUTH: Stop it! Stop messing around! PHILOSOPHER: Look, instead of placing worth on being different from people, place worth on being yourself. That is true individuality. A way of living in which, instead of being yourself, you compare yourself to others and try to accentuate only your difference is just a way of living in which you deceive both others and yourself.

Some people, on hearing the term self-reliance, will only be able to consider its economic aspects. But there are ten-year-old children who are self-reliant. And there are people in their fifties and sixties who are not. Self-reliance is a matter of the psyche.

‘All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.’ To get to the true meaning of this statement, you just consider the opposite. Supposing there was only one ‘me’ existing in the universe, what would it be like? It would most likely be a world in which neither language nor logic existed. There would be no competition, no envy and no loneliness, either. Because it is only with the existence of another person who shuns me that a human being can feel loneliness. Loneliness cannot arise if one is truly alone. PHILOSOPHER: Yes, loneliness exists only within relationships.

It is because of one’s giving that one is given to. One must not wait to have something given to one. One must not become a beggar of the spirit. This is an extremely important viewpoint when considering one other interpersonal relationship, continuing from ‘work’ and ‘friendship’.

work is a task accomplished with one’s comrades. Even with the kind of work that would seem to be undertaken on one’s own—for example, that of a painter—there are always cooperators. The people who make the paints and paintbrushes, the people who make the canvases and easels and then the purchasers at the art dealer. There is no such thing as work that can come into being without connections with other people and without cooperation.

And in order to be happy, we have to take steps within our interpersonal relationships. All human problems are interpersonal relationship problems. And all human happiness is interpersonal relationship happiness. I have spoken about this several times before.

Love is all. The person who lives wanting an easy life or looking for the easy way may find fleeting pleasures, but they will not be able to grasp real happiness. It is only by loving another person that we are liberated from self-centredness. It is only by loving another person that we can achieve self-reliance. And it is only by loving another person that we arrive at community feeling.

People often say that the first step is crucial. That everything will be fine if you just get past it. Of course, it is true that the biggest turning point is the first step. In real life, however, the trials of nothing days begin only after one has embarked on that first step. What is really being tested is one’s courage to keep walking on one’s path. Just as it is in philosophy.

Please remember: the time we are given is limited. And as our time is limited, all our interpersonal relationships come into being on the premise of our parting. This is not a nihilistic term—the reality is that we meet in order to part. YOUTH: Yes, undoubtedly. PHILOSOPHER: And so, there is one thing we can do. It is to devote our ceaseless efforts, in all our meetings and all our interpersonal relationships, towards the best possible parting. That is all.

If, for example, your relationship with your parents came to an end all of a sudden, or a relationship with a student or a friend came to an end, would you be able to accept it as the best possible parting? YOUTH: N-no. That’s so . . . PHILOSOPHER: Then, you have no choice but to start building now the kind of relationship that would make you feel that way. That is what is meant by ‘Live earnestly here and now.’