In the end, perhaps we can’t escape the question:
“Who are we living for?”

Living for yourself is important.

But sometimes, the moment you begin wishing for someone else’s happiness, the meaning of your own life changes just a little.

You meet someone.
You fall in love with someone.
You begin to want to protect someone.
You begin to hope for someone’s future.

I think there is something incredibly mysterious about that.

Why that person?

Why at that particular moment?

If things had happened just a little differently, perhaps you never would have met at all.

When I think about it that way, there are so many things in life that feel too mysterious to simply call them “coincidence.”

I often think about the future.

Being able to sense or glimpse something about the future is not the same as being able to freely choose it.

Even when something seems visible, that doesn’t mean everything is visible.

And sometimes, the future that is hardest to see is our own.

Maybe that is what makes life so fascinating.

We don’t simply walk along a future that has already been decided.

In every moment, we make choices.

Who will we value?

Whose happiness will we wish for?

And how will we choose to live our own lives?

I don’t think of “fate” as meaning that everything was decided from the very beginning.

There is coincidence.
There are choices.
There are encounters.

And perhaps what we call “fate” is created somewhere along the way, through the countless things that come together to shape our lives.

That is why I keep doing what I can, right here, right now.

I may not be able to change someone’s life, but perhaps I can make someone’s day just a little brighter.

I may not be able to decide someone else’s future, but perhaps I can become a small reason for them to believe that they can choose their own.

Life for you.
Love for you.

May your life always belong to you—to live it in your own way.

And may the lives of the people you have loved be filled with happiness, too.

Lisa Tsuchiya