To Begin With

Life has moments you think are good, and moments you think are hard. If there's someone out there who's walked a life where everything felt good, I can only think there's something wrong with them.

So how do you live this life that swings up and down no matter what? The answer I've arrived at is dead simple.

Become it fully, feel it fully, and act.

That's all it takes. I'm starting to seriously believe this simple way of living might just be what "happiness" is.

"Becoming it fully" is about how you exist. It's not some vague wish like "I want to become that." Behind a wish sits a sense of lack—"I'm not that yet"—so you start caring about how others see you, and you waver. It's not that. It's deciding, "This is how I live." Not a wish, but holding an "intention" as the main character of your own life.

"Feeling it fully" is about accepting yourself. Live long enough and emotions you don't want to see will rise up. Without realizing it, we put a lid on them and try to act clean. But the emotions you shove down into your unconscious will, at some point, break loose screaming, "Don't lid me!" When that happens, stop forcing them down. Throw the lid open, and if it hurts, feel it hurting with your whole body, and just accept it as it is: "Yeah, this messy version of me exists too."

"Acting" is about trusting your intuition. When you intend how you exist, and you don't run from the emotions welling up but feel them fully, the noise in your head clears away, and the "intuition" that floats up—you trust it just as it is, and you move.

• Don't wish—intend.

• Don't lid it—feel it fully.

• And trust your intuition, and move.

  
  

I titled this "To Begin With" because this marks my new start. Having walked a road of 56 years, when I look back now there are so many memories where I can deeply nod and think, "Ah, that was an important realization." And of course, there are the everyday moments I'll newly encounter from here on.

Rather than matching the world's idea of the right answer, I want to look straight with my own eyes at all of it—the time I've woven together so far, and the life and work that lie ahead.

From here, I plan to take all of those "realizations"—from looking back on the past to the daily life of the future—and turn them into articles, one by one.