One summer day when I was in the early years of elementary school, I made plans with a friend to go to the school swimming pool that afternoon.
I was on my way there when suddenly—
BANG!!!
There was an incredibly loud sound.
It seemed that I had been hit by a car coming from the opposite direction.
The impact was so loud that people from nearby houses came running outside.
“What was that terrible sound? What happened?!”
The driver got out of the car, too, and was very worried about me.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” they said.
But I wasn’t in any pain.
All I could think about was,
I promised my friend I’d go swimming. I have to get there.
So I told everyone, “I’m okay,” and, despite all the adults worrying about me, I simply continued on to the school pool.
When I arrived and found my friend safely waiting for me, I felt relieved.
While we were playing in the pool, I suddenly remembered,
Oh, right. I was just hit by a car.
As I was swimming, I noticed only a slight strange feeling where the car had hit me.
It’s strange. The impact was so loud, but I’m not hurt at all.
Even now, when I think back on it, it feels almost impossible to explain.
It is one of those moments in my life when I can only feel that somehow, I was protected by something greater.
There is another story involving a car, too.
This happened just a few years ago.
I was driving toward Toyama on Route 8, in the right lane.
The left lane was completely empty, so I thought,
I’ll move over to the left lane and speed along.
The moment I moved into the left lane, I suddenly heard a voice from somewhere inside me:
“There it is!!!”
I instinctively glanced at my side mirror.
About five cars behind me was a police car.
So I decided not to speed up after all, and simply stayed in the left lane and drove slowly.
As the police officer passed my car, he spoke to me through his microphone:
“Please don’t speed, okay?”
But the voice I had heard just moments earlier—
“There it is!!!”
—was completely different from the sound of the officer’s voice coming through the microphone.
And yet, somehow, that earlier voice had clearly been the very same voice, echoing from within me.
It felt as though heaven had helped me notice what was happening.
It was so mysterious.
And I felt incredibly grateful.
I think many of us have had moments like this in our lives—
moments that cannot really be explained logically,
moments so clear that the only way to understand them is to feel that somehow, we were being protected.
I believe that every one of us is guided and protected every day, in every moment, and kept alive through something beyond what we can see—
perhaps beings that exist on different levels,
or perhaps a deeper part of ourselves.
Throughout my life, I have always felt the guidance and support of this great, unseen something.
And for me, it has quietly become something steady and unquestionable within me:
something I cannot see, but know is certainly there.