Three Days of Happiness

I believe those three days, compared to the tragic thirty years I would have lived, compared to the worthwhile thirty days I would have lived, were of much, much more value.

What had kept me bound to life thus for had been the shallow hope that something good might happen someday.

If I just wouldn't be happy, or just wouldn't make anyone happy, or just wouldn't achieve any dreams, or just wouldn't contribute to society - if I would just be worthless in one of their categories, I'd be fine with that. But if I wouldn't be happy and wouldn't make anyone happy and wouldn't achieve any dreams and wouldn't contribute to society... I didn't know where I could look to for salvation.

Just take each step you’re able to manage, persevere little by little, and build it up that way.

The future wasn’t set in stone. Maybe something good would happen. Perhaps I would experience something that made me glad I kept living. The chances weren’t zero. And that meant I couldn’t yet give in to the allure of death.

I’m not really sure what it is you’re trying to do, but if you want to achieve anything, the first thing you’ll need is your health,

Nothing good will happen in my life, and I could see it as a blessing

Hey, listen. Tell me—you don’t seriously think your own life was worth three hundred thousand yen simply because they told you so, right?

Writing it down helps me organize it. I’m taking all the things in my head and moving them around to locations where they fit better. It’s like a defrag process.

without a partner to help you find mental solace, you had to support your entire world by yourself. When that solitary pillar breaks, the agony that results is plenty enough to drive you to destruction.

Until very recently, spending money and eating at a fancy restaurant wasn't an option. I'd been living in poverty for years, and I must have lost a lot of imagination in that time, too.

If anything, I felt relief, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The thing that kept me attached to life was a shallow hope that maybe, just maybe, something good might happen in the future. As baseless as that hope was, it was extraordinarily difficult to give it up. Even the most worthless human can hope for that improbable stroke of luck that wipes out all that misfortune. That was my salvation, and my trap. In a way, having someone definitively tell me, “Nothing good will happen in the life ahead of you” was kind of liberating. Now I could die in peace.

They are experts in the means of becoming miserable, and no matter how fortunate their circumstances are, they will always find a way out and skillfully evade any kind of happiness. Because this entire mental process is happening subconsciously, they think everything about the world is hell - but the truth is that they are turning wherever they go into their own personal hell instead.

A fool will be cured before his death

If everyone really preserved the happiest memory from their past perfectly, they’d only be sadder living in their relatively hollow present. And if everyone preserved the worst memory from their past perfectly, well, they’d still be sad. Everyone just remembers what it’s inconvenient not to remember.

In the long run, I think the way people actually differ is in which situations they are more likely to fall into. Everyone has this extreme belief in consistency of character, but I think it's a much shallower quality than most people like to think.

Sometimes it’s best not to fight the flow of feelings, but to leap into the abyss of despair headlong and wallow in the muck of your own self-pity. It can be the quickest way to get back on your feet.

He was a bit more blessed in his posture and face than most, but his expression deserved special mention. It was a relaxed expression as if to cover a kind of self-confidence. I’d recently begun to understand what it took to create such a look. In essence, it was an expression that could only be had by those with the confidence from loving someone and being loved.

Now that my body was all but certain to die before I turned twenty-one, it was much more impatient than a body that intended to live to eighty. The weight of each empty second passing was much greater. When I expected to live to eighty, I always had that unconscious arrogance of knowing I had sixty more years in me. Now that sixty years had become just three months, I was plagued by an insistence that I always had to do something.

Ormai non mi è rimasto più nulla da fare. Ho esaurito tutte le cose che avevo scritto nella lista. A cosa potrei dedicarmi da qui in avanti?" "Dovresti fare quello che ti piace. Avrai qualche hobby, no?" "Sì, ascoltare musica, leggere libri... Ma a pensarci ora, entrambe le cose erano solo un mezzo per poter continuare a vivere. Li usavo solo per venire a compromessi con una vita altrimenti insostenibile. E ora che non devo più prolungarla a tutti i costi, la musica e i libri non sono più così importanti per me". "Dovresti apprezzarli in modo diverso, sotto un altro punto di vista. Godere della loro bellezza pura e semplice." "Però poi alla fine ricado sempre sulla stessa questione. Qualsiasi cosa ascolti o legga, si crea in me un senso di mancata appartenenza, come se io non c'entrassi nulla. A mio parere, sono opere create nella stragrande maggioranza per chi ha ancora una vita davanti. Del resto è naturale, nessuno scriverebbe per chi sta per morire". [...] Stavo per morire senza lasciare alcuna traccia. Una volta sognavo di essere immortale, ma ora non era più necessario coltivare simili speranze. Non mi interessava più che qualcuno si ricordasse di me. Perchè ora avevo lei accanto, e con lei il suo sorriso. "Allora, caro Kusunoki..." disse a un certo punto Miyagi con un sorriso strepitoso in volto. "Come vogliamo trascorrere i prossimi tre giorni?" Avevo la sensazione che quei tre giorni sarebbero stati per me molto più preziosi dei trent'anni di vita miserabile, e anche di quegli ultimi trenta giorni pur significativi, che avrei altrimenti potuto vivere. Alla fine non ero diventato nè famoso nè ricco. Ma in effetti qualcosa di meraviglioso mi era successo. Ero arrivato a pensare, dal profondo del cuore, che era valsa la pena di vivere.

Stavo per morire senza lasciare alcuna traccia. Alla fine non ero riuscito a diventare nè importante nè ricco. Ma qualcosa di meraviglioso mi era successo. Ero arrivato a pensare, dal profondo del cuore, che era valsa la pena di vivere.

No matter where you set your eyes, the scenery was flavorless, but at this moment in time, everything about it was beautiful. I had no need to perceive the world in an efficient way anymore, and no need to blame it for my predicament. I had the wherewithal to view everything for exactly what it was.

If people could actually retain their greatest memories of the past in vivid detail, we’d all look more miserable living in the empty present. And if we kept the worst memories of the past in vivid detail, we’d look even more miserable living in the empty present. Everyone just says they remember these things, because it’s better to pretend that you do.

I’m just reading them. I don’t get anything out of it . . . I don’t have that part of my brain that’s supposed to keep anything of value from them. I’m just pouring out soup from a huge pot into a little tiny dish. As soon as it hits the dish, it’s spilling over, and the whole point is gone.