Everybody Dies, But Not Everybody Lives
同志社国際中学校

３年

吉本早織

It is not death most people are afraid of.
It is getting to the end of life, only to realize that you never truly lived.
There was a study done, a hospital study on 100 elderly people facing deathclose to their last breath. They were asked to reflect about their life’s biggest

Nearly all of them said they regretted not the things they did but the things
they didn’t do.
The risks they never took; the dreams they didn’t pursue.
I ask you would your last words be, if only I had ― hey, you wake up.
Why do you exist? Life is not meant to simply work, wait for the weekend
and pay rent. No, no I don’t know much. But I know this every person on
this earth has a gift.
And I apologized to the black community but I can no longer pretend. Martin
Luther King?
That man never had a dream, that dream had him.
See people don’t choose dreams, dreams choose them. So the question I’m
getting to is, do you have the courage to grab the dream that picked you?
That befit you and grips you; or will you let it get away and slip through?
You know I learned a fact about airplanes the other day. This was sosurprising to see, I was talking to a pilot and he told me that many of hispassengers think planes are dangerous to fly in. But he said actually, it is alot more dangerous for a plane to stay on the ground. I said what? Like how
does that sound? But he said because, on the ground, the plane starts to rust.
Malfunction and wear, much faster than it ever would if it was in the air. AsI walked away I thought, yeah, makes total sense because planes were built tolive in the skies. And every person was built to live out the dream they haveinside. So it is perhaps the saddest loss to live a life on the ground without
ever taking off.

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中学生―Ｉ部門

regret.

See most of us are afraid of the thief, that come in the night to steal all of
our things. But there is a thief in your mind who is after your dreams. Hisname is doubt.
If you see him call the cops and keep him away from the kids because he iswanted for murder, for he has killed more dreams than failure ever did. Hewears many disguises and like a virus will leave you blinded, divided andturn you into a “kinda”.
See “kinda” is lethal. You know what “kinda” is? There’s a lot of “kinda”
people, you “kinda” want a career change, you “kinda” want to get straight
中学生―Ｉ部門

A’s, you “kinda” want to get in shape. If you “kinda” want something, then
you will “kinda” get the results you want.
What is your dream? What ignites that spark? You can’t kinda want that, you
got to want it with every part of your whole heart. Will you struggle? Yeah,yeah . . . you will struggle, no way around it. You will fall many times, but
who’s counting? Just remember, there’s no such thing as a smooth mountain.
If you want to make it to the top then, there are sharp ridges that must bestepped over. There will be times you get stressed and things you get
depressed over. But let me tell you something. Steven Spielberg was rejectedfrom film school three times, three times but he kept going.
Struggle and criticisms are prerequisites for greatness. That is the law of thisuniverse and no one escapes it. Because pain is life but you can choose whattype. Either the pain on the road to success or the pain of being haunted withregret.
We have been given a gift that we call life.
So don’t blow it. You’re not defined by your past instead you were born anew
in each moment. So own it, now.
What invention do you have buried in your mind? What idea? What cure?
What skill did you have inside to bring out to this universe?
“Uni” meaning one, “verse” meaning song, you have a part to play in thissong.
So grab that microphone and be brave. Sing your heart out on life’s stage.
You cannot go back and make a brand new beginning. But you can start now
and make a brand new ending.

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