How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

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.

There is nothing more beautiful than people nurturing goodwill toward their fellow beings. And those are the human relations that humans truly deserve. Copper, don’t you agree?

that doesn’t mean it’s okay to ignore the fragile spirits of those in poverty. At least, Copper, until the day that you have stood in the place of the poor and tasted the bitter pain of poverty and then stood up to the world time and again, without losing your confidence, you are not qualified to do so.

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.

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. Today, no matter how shameful it seems, our society is not there yet. One might say the human race has progressed, but we still haven’t made it that far. This remains a problem for now and the days to come.

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?

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.

If you think only of that one thing, you’ll never be able to change it, but if your regrets help you to really learn an essential thing about being human, that experience won’t have been wasted on you. Your life afterward, thanks to that, will be better and stronger than it was before. Jun’ichi, that’s the only way for a person to become great.

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? That’s it. It’s truly painful to admit one’s own mistakes. Most people think up any excuse they can to avoid it.

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.

I couldn’t produce anything even if I wanted to. Still, I can become a good person. I can become a good person and create one good person for the world. And I think that if I can just do that, then I might become a person who can create even more than that.