How Do You Live?

by Genzaburo Yoshino

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.

Above all, when one stands to gain or lose, it is exceptionally difficult to step outside of oneself and make correct judgments, and thus one could say that people who are able to think Copernicus-style even about these things are exceptionally great people. Most people slip into a self-interested way of thinking, become unable to understand the facts of the matter, and end up seeing only that which betters their own circumstances.

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.

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. That is something you must discover on your own as you get older—and even after that, when you are grown, you will have to study this and seek out the answers for yourself.

You will never really know these writings just by reading them, the way you would study mathematics or chemistry.

That is why I think the first, most basic step in these matters is to start with the moments of real feeling in your life, when your heart is truly moved, and to think about the meaning of those. 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.

And that is why you absolutely must attend to the things you feel in your own heart, the things that move you deeply.

But if I were to put it simply, it’s that you should collect many experiences and, while you do, always be true to that voice in your heart.

They already felt close enough that there was no need to speak. How nice it was just to lie there in silence.

And as a result, using a single physical principle, he was able to explain very neatly both the motion linking the web of stars spinning round and round through the enormous universe and the motion of a single dewdrop falling from the grass.

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.

Above their heads spread the vast, limitless night sky, and the stars twinkled ceaselessly. On a night like this, to think about the distant celestial world was to feel that one was disappearing into the atmosphere.

In the sky, the moon, without anger, laughter, or tears, with a quiet countenance over the rooftops and telephone poles, slipped past the boughs of the keyaki trees and followed the two of them as they walked.

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.

People are each limited to what a single individual can experience on their own. But people have language. We can transmit our experience to others, and we can listen to the experience of others and share in that knowledge. On top of that, since we invented the alphabet, we can share our experiences with each other in writing.

Thus, the various fields of study may be considered to be bundles of the human experience up to now. Experiences are handed down to us from prior times, and we in turn pile our new experiences on top of these, and in this way the human race has been able to advance from a primitive state to our present state. If people were to start again from when we were like monkeys, but this time each person on their own, we would probably remain like monkeys forever and would never attain the civilization we have now.

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

Human beings should never be so humiliated as to damage their self-respect.

it’s because 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.

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.

Every day, these people must endure all sorts of hardships. In a life in which there’s never quite enough of anything, it’s hard even to get treatment for an illness.

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.

So working as prime minister can damage your health, and some think it may actually shorten your life span. Even being the prime minister of a single country, during peacetime, without having to make history, is so demanding that it drains your life force away, just like that. Think that over, then look at Napoleon’s career.

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? 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?”

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.

Similarly, a one-eyed man also feels unfortunate, because although we expect human beings to be born with two eyes, he lacks that. If people naturally had only one eye, you can be sure that nobody would be crying over being one-eyed. No, on the contrary, people who had been born with two eyes would be crying at the thought of being deformed.

When we feel physical pain or suffering, it’s because something has gone wrong, and it’s thanks to that pain and suffering that we realize that. You could say that when we feel pain, the pain is telling us that conditions are not normal in our bodies. If we didn’t feel any pain at all, even when something went wrong, we might not realize it, and depending on the circumstances, that might cost us our lives.

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 our dreams are cruelly dashed, then our hearts are wounded and invisible blood flows. If we must live without kindness and affection, our hearts develop an unquenchable thirst.

“Error has the same relationship to truth as sleeping does to waking. I have seen that when one wakes from error, one turns to truth again as if revived.”

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.

Still, I can become a good person. I can become a good person and create one good person for the world.