How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

For me, the joy is that the book contains both parts, pulling at each other, each informing the other side, and that if you removed either part you would have a less interesting book.)

Miyazaki makes films for whole people and makes films about consequences.

everyone in the film is acting according to what they believe to be their best interests without realising that what they do affects everyone else.

Right now, beneath Copper’s very eyes, as well as in places he couldn’t even see, some hundreds of thousands of people were living. How many different sorts of people were there? What were they all doing now, while Copper watched from above? What were they thinking? It was an unpredictable and chaotic world.

For truly, just as you felt, individual people, one by one, are all single molecules in this wide world. We gather together to create the world, and what’s more, we are moved by the waves of the world and thereby brought to life.

there may be nothing more deep-rooted and stubborn than the human tendency to look at and think of things with themselves at the center.

But as we grow older, we come around to the Copernican way of thinking, more or less. We learn to understand people and all manner of things from a broader global perspective.

In the world at large, people who are able to free themselves from this self-centered way of thinking are truly uncommon.

Still, as long as we held fast to the thought that our own planet was at the center of the universe, humanity was unable to understand the true nature of the universe—and likewise, when people judge their own affairs with only themselves at the center, they end up unable to know the true nature of society. The larger truth never reveals itself to them.

There was really nothing he could do to keep from being left out of everything in the worst way.

When it comes to English, geometry, algebra—even someone like me could teach you these. However, people come together and build this world, and they live their different lives in it individually, and I cannot teach you what that means or what value it all has.

And your heart, well, it opens only when you actually encounter a great work of art in person and it makes a deep impression on you. If it means anything at all to live in this world, it’s that you must live your life like a true human being and feel just what you feel.

But even when you have read the books and learned the ideas, the ultimate key to the mystery will be—Copper, of course it will be you. You, yourself and no other. For it is only through the life you will lead, building on your many experiences and impressions, that you will be able to understand the truths in the words of these great thinkers. You will never really know these writings just by reading them, the way you would study mathematics or chemistry.

The things that you feel most deeply, from the very bottom of your heart, will never deceive you in the slightest. And so at all times, in all things, whatever feelings you may have, consider these carefully.

you must make a habit of thinking honestly, with your own experience as a foundation, and—Copper, this is very important!—if someone fakes this part, no matter what kind of great-sounding things they think or say, they are all lies in the end.

The most important thing—more than what other people think, more than anything—is that you should first know for yourself, truly and deeply, where human greatness lies.

As you judge good for good, and bad for bad, case by case—and also as you actually do the things you have judged to be good—at all times, let this feeling flow through you.

Think of your friend Kitami’s words: “No matter what anyone says . . . !” You must have that kind of willpower in your heart.

you may think that you want to be one as well, in the end you will simply become a great-seeming man, and true greatness may always elude you.

lots of people in the world who act just for appearance’s sake—in order to seem great in the eyes of others. That type of person worries first about how they are reflected in other people’s eyes, and they inadvertently end up neglecting their true selves, as they really are. I hope you don’t become that sort of person.

you absolutely must attend to the things you feel in your own heart, the thin...

you should collect many experiences and, while you do, always be true to that voice in your heart.

However, think of how hard it would be for a person in Uragawa’s position to stand up to Yamaguchi without backing down. It would be fair to call such a person a hero. Anyone who criticizes Uragawa because he’s not such a hero is mistaken. Because people like Uragawa deserve generosity and sympathy from the people around them.

the things that we call obvious are tricky. When you think about a thing as if it were self-evident and follow it wherever it may lead, soon enough you run into a thing that you can no longer call self- evident.

I realized that to get from Australia to me when I was a baby, the powdered milk had to run a very, very long relay race.

I feel that human particles are all connected like strings in a net, with countless other people that they haven’t met or even seen, and without even knowing it.

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

In other words, you could say that their work rests on a foundation of global connections between human beings.

What you discovered, without anyone teaching it to you, is a great thing!

Discovering self awareness :)

Because of that, we can compare the experiences of many people in different circumstances and bring them together from all over into one place. When we unite those different points of view into the broadest possible thing, without creating contradictions, we call that a field of study.

It’s only through that work, which builds on all that came before, that a discovery can be considered to belong to the human race.

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!

There is nothing more beautiful than people nurturing goodwill toward their fellow beings. And those are the human relations that humans truly deserve.

to lead a life of poverty is often to go about one’s life feeling inferior to others.

we must not forget to make a habit of modesty and restraint in our lives.

Someone who feels inferior because they are poor can never be much of a human being.

in the world today, the vast majority of people are poor. So the vast majority of the people in this world are unable to live their lives in a way that is really human—this is the problem of our time, greater than any other.

However, you may be shocked to learn how many people in the world can’t even live the life the Uragawas have! To these people, the Uragawa family is anything but poor.

If you rely on your own labor to live, then not to be able to work is to face starvation, is it not?

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.

But when you think about it, all those lush green rice paddies were built with the hard labor of peasants who could never escape on a summer holiday.

You know the glorious history of human struggle. How for tens of thousands of years we piled effort upon effort to advance at last from our primitive life in ancient times to our current civilization. But today, the fruits of those labors are not awarded to everyone.

You’re correct. It’s wrong for sure. We are all human beings, so if we can’t all live a life that is really human, something is wrong. A society that doesn’t allow that is wrong. Nobody can deny this, as long as they have an honest heart.

We are grateful for good fortune specifically because we feel that it rarely happens.

If you look at things only from this viewpoint, it’s not impossible that you might see yourself as superior to these people. But when you try changing your point of view, these people are the very ones bearing this entire world on their shoulders. They are fantastic people beyond comparison to those such as yourself.

Of all the things that all of us need to live, every one is the product of human labor, is it not?

Without the labor of those people, we would have no civilization, and without that, there would be no progress for society. And what about you? What will you create? You take many things from the world, but I wonder what you will give back in return?

The work of making things itself makes it possible for people to be truly human.

If someone acts desperate and crazy just to look like a daredevil, that’s not a great person! That person’s no different from a wild dog.

That’s why, when I look at this picture, my heart becomes full. An inescapable, unhappy fate awaited him, but Napoleon had no choice but to fight toward it.