I see people around me who don't know what to do with their lives. I understand that it's not easy to determine their future, but I also know that without trying to find meaning in their daily lives, they are simply wasting precious time. There are people who study just for the sake of studying, work simply to work, and do things they don't want to do because they feel compelled to. I don't understand my peers whose ambition is to work in a factory for their entire lives, earning €1,500 and not being able to afford a vacation in the future. And I'm not only referring to work, but also to finding purpose and something to engage with every day—a passion that motivates us to wake up. I'm not criticizing their current choices; in fact, I am the first to earn €1,400 a month. What I criticize is the idea that they see themselves doing this for the rest of their lives, with their ambition limited to a permanent job in the factory, and they are content with this perspective, at least temporarily.

Yukio Mishima, in "Sun and Steel," says that life is like a house with a vast garden. The house represents our being—how we are born, our personality, and our emotions. On the other hand, the garden symbolizes our life, our body, and the choices we make. While changing the physical structure of a house, made of bricks and concrete, is extremely difficult, it is the state of the garden that determines how the world perceives us and shapes the rest of our lives. The sun and steel represent how we choose to live our lives. We can strive to improve and transform it, much like working the land in our garden using the sun's rays and the steel of a plow. Alternatively, we can decide to let nature take its course, allowing weeds to grow and obscure a house that might be beautiful but, due to a neglected garden, will always be seen as neglected itself.

Abandoning our lives to fate, without having dreams worth pursuing, is akin to having the sun and plow to plant a single rose in a sea of overgrown vegetation.