How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

If so, then we can admire Napoleon’s great vitality, and while we do, we can also ask the question, “What in the world did Napoleon, with this wonderful vitality, accomplish?” Copper, this is not just about Napoleon. You must ask questions like this of any great person or hero.

But more than humbling ourselves to these people, we must be bold enough to ask questions. Such as “What did they accomplish using these extraordinary abilities?” Or “Of what use are their extraordinary accomplishments?”

Because no matter who the so-called hero is—whether it’s Napoleon or Goethe or even Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who ruled all of Japan in the sixteenth century, or General Nogi, who commanded the Japanese army during the war against Russia—all of them were born during this long, long march of human history and will die within it as well.

Consider this tremendous current, flowing so slowly and endlessly. Doesn’t two thousand or even three thousand years’ time come to seem short? And doesn’t a single human life seem no longer than the blink of an eye?

Napoleon believed that he could do whatever he had the power to do. And what’s more, he thought that he had to do those things in order to maintain his power.

Among those we call heroic and great, the only people we can truly respect are those who have helped to advance the human race. And among all the achievements of these people, only the ones that follow the flow of this advancing current have true value.

To be honest, facing the three boys would be really hard. But to be friends with them again, the way it was before, was what he wanted most. No, it was what he needed. So there was nothing to do but apologize so that everyone would feel better—this, even Copper could see. But what should he say in his apology?

Oh, how could he pretend to be a deep thinker, a great person, with this memory clinging to him? How could he deceive himself?

Copper really began to dislike that person who’d stood there in the snow and abandoned his friends, even though it was Copper himself. He’d never dreamed that he could be so cowardly, so weak when it really counted.

“You must not repeat this mistake again. Gather your courage, Copper, and do what you must do. No matter what you do, you can’t change the past. Think of the present instead. Go and do what you have to do now, and be brave. When it comes to this sort of thing—Copper, when it comes to this sort of thing, you simply must not give in.

“Besides, once we had gotten to the top of the stairs, my good intentions didn’t matter at all. The chance to do what I had felt in my heart probably wasn’t going to come a second time.

Even when we become adults, it often happens that we think back on things with regret. We wonder, Why didn’t I do what was in my heart that one time? When just about anyone takes a serious look back at their lives, we all may have one or two things like this.

We act to show the warm and beautiful things we feel in our hearts, just as they are, and after that, we might have a brief moment now and then when we think, Oh, I’m glad I did that.

Other than a dethroned king, who among us would feel sadness in not being a king?

As we move through our lives as human beings, all of us, young and old, encounter sadness, hardship, and pain, each in our own way. Of course, those are not things anyone ever wishes for. But it is thanks to sadness, hardship, and pain that we come to know what a true human being is.

In good health, when nothing is wrong in our bodies, we live our lives almost forgetting that a heart, a stomach, intestines, and all the many other organs are inside us, playing an important role in our everyday lives. However, when something goes wrong and our heart skips or our stomach hurts, then for the first time we think about our own organs and become aware of the problem.

You could say that when we feel pain, the pain is telling us that conditions are not normal in our bodies.

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.

If it weren’t natural for people to live together in harmony, then why would we suffer when we felt a lack of harmony?

Generally, when people feel they are miserable, when people suffer, it’s because that kind of misery isn’t natural. Copper, we must find a way to draw knowledge from all our suffering and sadness!

there are also people who believe that they are unfortunate, because their own selfish desires haven’t been gratified. Others go through various hardships for the sake of the most superficial vanities. However, the suffering and unhappiness of these sorts of people actually happens because they can’t let go of their selfish desires, their trivial vanities. If they do find a way to let such things go, they find that the pain vanishes at the same time.

If we must live without kindness and affection, our hearts develop an unquenchable thirst.

If we didn’t have the power to follow the voice of reason, why would we taste the pain of remorse?

“Other than a dethroned king, who would sorrow over not having a throne?” If we were not born with the ability to conduct ourselves with morality, there would be no reason for bitter tears.

As long as we are human, we all make mistakes. And then, as long as our conscience doesn’t go numb, the knowledge of the mistakes we have made can’t help but cause painful thoughts for all of us.

We have the power to decide on our own who we will be. Therefore, we will make mistakes. However— We have the power to decide on our own who we will be. Therefore, we can also recover from mistakes.