How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

Still, for the sake of discovery, I think sometimes you have to live with being scolded by the teacher.

I think you will understand the need to study without any preaching from me. If you want to make great discoveries, you must now study fiercely, first and foremost, and ascend to the summit of today’s scholarship. Then work from that pinnacle. But, Copper, remember this well. To work from up there—no, even to be able to make the climb—you must not lose the spirit that woke you in the middle of the night, to follow your own questions wherever they lead!

If, by chance, people such as these came down with a chronic illness or found themselves unable to work due to a serious injury, what in the world would they do? If you rely on your own labor to live, then not to be able to work is to face starvation, is it not? Despite that, the sad truth is that in today’s world, the people who will be in the most trouble if they get hurt are the people who are in the greatest danger of getting hurt.

When you think of the things you need in your daily life, you don’t produce any of them, so you are definitely a consumer. But while you may not have noticed, there is something else, a big thing that you produce day after day. What could that be?

The world is full of people who are not bad, but weak, people who bring unnecessary misfortune upon themselves and others for no reason but weakness. A heroic spirit that’s not devoted to human progress may be empty and meaningless, but goodness that is lacking in the spirit of heroism is often empty as well.

So although there’s no doubt that everyone wants to avoid physical pain, in this sense, it’s something that we should be grateful for, something we need. Because of it, we know that a failure has occurred inside us, and at the same time, we also come to know exactly what the natural state of the human body should be. In the same way, when a person is living in a way that’s not normal for a human being, suffering and hardships of the heart let us know that. So then, thanks to that pain and suffering, we can clearly grasp what a human being should naturally be.

But among all those miseries, there’s one that pierces our hearts most deeply, that wrings the bitterest tears from our eyes. It’s the awareness that we have committed a mistake that we can’t go back and fix. When we look back on our actions—not in terms of personal benefit but in a moral frame of mind—I’m afraid there’s nothing quite so painful as thinking, What have I done?