How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

But when you try changing your point of view, these people are the very ones bearing this entire world on their shoulders.

But between the people who produce things over and above what they consume, and send them out into the world, and the people who don’t produce anything and who do nothing but consume, which are the great human beings? Which are the important human beings?

But whether we call it accomplishment, vitality, or spirit, what in the world is it? Isn’t it the power to achieve something? The power to realize some purpose in the world?

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.

Even if nobody else knew what you’d done, you yourself knew, and what’s more, even if you could somehow forget completely, once you’d done a thing, there was no changing that fact. There was absolutely no way afterward to deny to yourself that you were that sort of person.

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?