https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Itsuki (his career)
@The Purpose of Life: Hiroyuki Itsuki: Gentosha, 1999
Surprisingly, in his writer’s intuition, Japanese author Hiroyuki Itsuki already foresaw the 2011 earthquake and tsunami more than a decade ago. Looking back from the present day, when earthquakes and the collapse of nuclear facilities are a reality, he seems like a prophet.
The author’s life had a disastrous start, beginning with his raising from the war zone. Having first seen the misery of life and the aggravation of fate, he seems to endure the hardships and harshness of later life with aplomb. In fact, he even seems to enjoy it. However, there was, and continues to be, a battle with various inner struggles. The trajectory of these struggles appears in his works. His works offer solace to those of us who have similar problems.
@passages that impressed me
-The night (in Japan) has just begun. The night will continue to grow darker. It is a deep, dark night, and I don’t know how far it will go.
(Other countries) have been hit by a series of large earthquakes. It is not natural to think that the crustal movement that occurred in Taiwan will never occur in this Japan archipelago. Accidents at nuclear facilities have occurred one after another recently. Some day, somewhere in the future, an even worse catastrophe may be triggered. It would be more realistic to think so.
It is not groundless to think about the coming earthquakes. It is not unwarranted to worry about a major accident at a nuclear facility.
I have a feeling that we are slowly descending into hard times once again.
-Is there a purpose to life?
I don’t think so. After decades of thinking about it, I have come to believe so.
I don’t mean to sound like a pompous person, but I don’t think there is a common purpose to life for everyone.
-I see each person as a completely different being, and I think that’s what makes us valuable.
-Life is not something that goes the way you want. One cannot avoid acknowledging this, no matter how unpleasant it may be.
-What is effort? What is courage? Is it not also a part of the qualities that we are born with by chance? I can’t help thinking about it.
-And to have the character to be able to work hard is such good fortune that you can walk around apologizing to everyone around you, saying, “I’m sorry I’m the only one who has been blessed with this.
-We all have different relationships and experiences. We meet our parents, live with our brothers and sisters, meet friends, mentors, and the opposite sex. Few things happen as calculated.
-Professor Nakamura says that human beings have an uncontrollable destiny. The fact that we are born as human beings and “live” on this earth is, in itself, our destiny that cannot be reversed.
If we can translate this feeling of shared suffering into love in the larger sense, we can say that it is only through the weight of our common destiny that we can feel “love” within ourselves.
By becoming more aware of ourselves as members of a family that shares a common destiny, we can regain a sense of oneness with others that we have almost lost.
There is no such thing as free will, effort, or hope. We are born into a world where things are not as we wish them to be, and we live in silence and endure our lives.
It is in this “living” and “continuing to live” that I feel the greatest meaning of life.
-The most natural path for us is to accept our destiny and fate as the starting point of our life.
To live is to be in the space between fate and destiny, and to accept it with an honest heart. To endure, to not give up, and to continue to live. That is the only way. If we do this, I believe that we may encounter a moment when the knot between fate and destiny may unexpectedly become entangled or untangled.
The first step in the purpose of life is to live. To know one’s destiny and fate, to accept them, and to live with them. I am beginning to think that this is the “purpose of life.
-I believe that we are close to a world in which a wealthy group will be rich and the majority will have to toil in poverty.
-When I look back at myself, I realize how pathetic I am. I think only of protecting myself and do not have the heart to truly love others.
We have no control over our desires and are all too attached to things. We live in fear of poverty, disease, and death. We are only briefly touched by the tragic events in foreign countries, civil wars, starvation, and poverty reported in newspapers and on TV. Our wills are weak, and they are quick to throw away decisions we have made.
What is needed then is a thorough sense of helplessness. A feeling of disillusionment with oneself, a feeling of disgust with people, and a feeling that what one is in now is nothing but hell. The idea of reversal that emerges from this feeling is called absolute reliance on Buddah.
-The purpose of life is to find “the purpose of one’s own life. It is to find one’s own unique purpose, one’s own “meaning of life” that is different from anyone else in the world. It may sound strange, but you could say, “The purpose of life is to find your own purpose”. I agree.
Goals end when they are achieved. Create your own life purpose. It is to create a story. Create your own story and live by it. There is also the path of believing in a story created by people you can relate to (faith and religion).
