How I Have Been Living

I must admit that a question such as the one posed in the title had never crossed my mind for the vast majority of my nearly thirty-year-long life. Yet I have, in some way or another, always been existing in this world. Before becoming aware of this, I fear that everything I did was passive, animalistic, and on “autopilot”. In other words, before genuinely confronting this question, any possible answer would have been meaningless.

For me, delving deep into the self has always been an important subject. Especially as I grow older, my interest in myself seems to have surpassed my curiosity about the world at large. And only in recent years has the idea of “being alive” begun to take some shape for me, or rather, my personality has finally solidified enough to be gradually observed by myself.

On death

First of all, I am someone who fears death.

At a time when I had “nothing to write about,” I once imagined a game for myself: Suppose a journalist came to interview me and said, “For the next month, starting tomorrow, I will give you a single-word topic each day. Please express your most detailed thoughts on that day's topic. And today, being the first day, I’m going to ask you a different question: if you were to interview yourself, what thirty topics would you raise?” Confronted with this fictional journalist, my immediate, instinctive answer was “death.”

Not only because I fear death, but also because the fear of death occupies a significant place in my life, I often think about it—probably because I’m deeply attached to being alive—if one day I’m old and dying, lying on a hospital bed, I might desperately want to know what will happen the next day. What kind of weather will it be tomorrow? Will it be sunny? Overcast? Cloudy? Will there be a cool breeze? I wonder whether this summer will be hot. What will winter be like? Will it snow? After I die, what will my family have for their first proper meal? Whatever happens, people still have to eat, don’t they? There might be a bird chirping outside the window—what kind of bird is it? Where is it? I want to see it. I’d also like to see if there are any lovely little flowers or grasses growing by the wall outside. I really want to take a look! I’d really like to grab a small stool and sit in front of the wheat fields at my old home again for a while; I’d like to return to that nameless hill I once climbed during a trip to the grasslands, and look around again from the same angle; I also recall one afternoon, when my partner and I visited the bookstore near our home, We bought a few magazines, then went next door to the convenience store to pick out some bread for our park picnic...

For a long time, I couldn’t face these thoughts calmly—they were too beautiful, and too cruel. Yet they lingered in my mind, refusing to leave. I also couldn’t use religion or anything similar to console myself (on matters of faith, I suppose I am something of an Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov). I don’t dare confront death—or rather, I don’t dare face my imagined version of my own death.

But I deeply enjoy those quiet moments spent with my partner, picking out food, with the setting sun casting a warm glow across the store shelves. Because of this, whenever I realize I’m in such a moment, I subconsciously pay extra attention to everything I can feel. In hindsight, this is probably an unconscious form of resistance against death. I genuinely enjoy sitting idly, watching the sky, the clouds, the kittens, the puppies, the trees, and the grass. My photography style seems to reflect the same tendency, though I hadn’t realized it at the time—more on that later.

Returning to the present, my view aligns with those expressed by Heidegger in Being and Time, or by Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, namely, that True life begins with the realization of death. To understand this, one must first acknowledge the inescapable, irreplaceable, and unpredictable nature of death—and thus its absurd coexistence with the present moment. And it is in struggling against this that one becomes truly awake to life.

With this perspective, I have revised many of my own thoughts—questions like “What do I want to do?”, “What should I do?”, or “What must I do?” After all, when facing death, it becomes nearly impossible to deceive oneself. I suppose I wouldn’t want to die with the regret of not having savored the small details of everyday life more deeply. So each time I remember this idea, I try to act on it—Even during heated arguments with my partner, I suddenly realize that this too is a precious moment in the shared youth of our lives. And for the sake of that tiny piece of happiness, I still choose to hug her first.

In the film Ikiru, Takashi Shimura’s character, Kanji Watanabe, is forced to confront death after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. From despair, to seeking solace in family (in vain), to indulgence, and eventually to being moved by youthful vitality—Watanabe ultimately decides to clear the sewage and build a small park. This is, in a sense, his redemption and enactment of the self and of truly being alive. Personally, I don’t entirely endorse the existentialist philosophy of “acting in the moment,” In my view, whether it’s building a park or drinking for pleasure—both are valid choices, So long as they stem from a thoughtfully formed “desire to live.” My core belief is that death is unique to each individual, and so the “desire to live” must also be uniquely personal. Mere existence, I fear, can hardly be called truly “living.” The key lies in this: by grasping the meaning of death, one may begin to reassess their values and responsibilities; through that process, attempt to break free from the inertia of the mundane or mediocre life; and ultimately, live—with greater freedom, authenticity, and composure.