Wish

Which is better: to have a wish and experience failure and heartbreak, or to live without one and gain a small measure of protection and predictability?

I used to be the former. I believed good things required curiosity, the audacity to dare into the unknown.

However, that belief began to shift over time. Some adventures left deep cuts that took years to heal. Others revealed themselves as pointless games I didn’t need to invest in. Sometimes, I learned, safety mattered more than challenge. 

—

To be honest, hoping almost felt dangerous in recent years.

To hope meant to endure for a better future. But my life did not get better. It stood in a season of fallow, a time of endless waiting and rejection. 

So I tried not to hope. All I wanted to protect whatever little peace I had — though even that, at times, was taken from me — and push through each day.

—

One morning in Tokyo, I took a subway to Waseda University. The moment I stepped onto the campus, I realized I was living my dream: as a teenager, I had longed to study here. To read and write in this city.

I marveled at how a wish I had forgotten had quietly found its way back to me. The shape and timing were different, but it arrived at last. 

How mysterious, I thought with a smile, this thing we call life. It was a smile that knew sorrow. A smile that still wished in the heart.