The Way to Win

By February I was overwhelmed, and by March, paralyzed by the growing mountain of assignments. For me, the last straw was the news that a severe head trauma had put my aunt in a permanent coma. Suddenly, I could no longer do what I always had when I and the world were at odds—I could no longer pretend to be “all good.”

The first person I ever shared my true self with was the co-president of UM’s SGI campus club. I felt comfortable with him and knew he wouldn’t judge, but it wasn’t something I felt I could openly share—that I was gay. For the past three years, I’d dated someone in secret. Living a secret life, having a secret self, presenting one person to the world while being another was more emotionally draining than I knew. Hiding the exhaustion, too, required enormous energy.

It is my pride to have inherited a stoic strength from both my parents. Salespeople by trade, they never showed a trace of exhaustion outside the home; it would have been bad, of course, for business. But I may have learned, too, to smile through all things, at all times, in all places. It was no small thing for me to turn to my classmate the day she snapped me out of my trance to tell her, as I rarely told anyone, that I was not at all “all good.” I told her about my aunt and my being overwhelmed, and she, in turn, shared her own struggles. Before I knew it, we were discussing Buddhism—I’d brought it up somehow—the first time in a long time that I’d discussed my faith with anyone outside the SGI. It was, for me, an early indication that I did not have to pretend to make others happy. In fact, pretending would only bring us both unhappiness. I took this realization to the Gohonzon.

Everything, at every moment, it seemed, was closing in. Ahead of me, deadlines barreled down, and with them my prospects for work. That summer would be my last before graduation, and so my last crack at an internship before entering the working world. Without one, my chances of landing visa-granting work grew slim. And then it seemed that they’d been dashed altogether when I received an email informing me I stood accused of plagiarism. A mistake, I knew, but one that scared me badly.

While chanting, these words from Ikeda Sensei came to mind and snapped me from my resignation: “Earnest chanting is the wellspring for the energy to challenge these things” (The New Human Revolution, vol. 1, revised edition, p. 268).

The word earnest stuck out. Especially since the way I’d been praying could only be described as desperate. I shifted my prayer from a plea to a determination and, less than a month from internship deadlines, submitted applications with the same intensity with which I’d begun to pray, sending out a dozen, a hundred, 200 applications. All told, I sent out 900. And then… nothing. Days and weeks went by without a word from anyone. And then, on March 7, a major company accepted my application. I was moving full steam ahead, confidently along a path that stretched clear and wide before me. In fact, by June, when the plagiarism charge was dropped at last, I’d nearly forgotten it altogether. I was struggling, yes, but with purpose—the way I’d guess a caterpillar feels, on its way to becoming a butterfly.

Then, in October, I got my heart broken. I’d changed, my partner told me and left. And it felt like a part of me left with him—the part I’d kept a secret from the world and that I’d never had to hide from him. For two months straight, I drifted, further and further from my friends in faith, bar-hopping with buddies, wondering why I was in the States and whether I should be at all. It was my young men’s leader who got me to commit to that November’s young men’s conference at the Florida Nature and Culture Center. The guidance I got there was crucial.

It was past 10 on Sunday night when I sat down with someone and laid it all out—my bitter heartbreak and the doubts that came with it. He was blunt. His exact words: “Sounds like you’ve completely forgotten your mission.” 

That Monday, before stepping onto my plane bound for Michigan, I texted a senior in faith, asking to set up a rhythm of weekly morning chanting, at either his place or mine. His response was swift: “Of course.”

Getting back into a steady rhythm of morning daimoku began to shift something within my life. My prayer was beginning to flow from a different place—from a sense of mission to create my own happiness. I wanted to be happy, deserved to be happy, needed to be happy, if I was to support anyone in doing the same. And that meant not denying how I truly felt and who I truly was. This kind of prayer gave rise to greater and greater energy—energy that I did not know I had.

That week, I scheduled a visit with a young man in my chapter, my first in over a year. We chanted together, studied the Living Buddhism and discussed what he was challenging—friendships and academics. It was quite ordinary but astonishingly beneficial. Afterward, I felt better than I had in months.

My own troubles seemed almost to resolve themselves. I got focused and began hammering out my schoolwork, one assignment at a time. I fully supported my professor in my apprenticeship, co-authoring an academic paper with her, and got back on track to graduate early, by May. 

What’s more, I’ve taken on Central Territory Student Division leadership while taking the lead in UM’s SGI campus club. I’m determined to see out its growth as an example to clubs across Central Territory, the country and the world. Personally, my goal is to lead by example, to show young people—students, in particular—that a prayer to fulfill one’s mission is a prayer to become happy, to win just as you are, because, in fact, it’s the only way to win.

March 21, 2025 World Tribune, p. 5