Gotta love Ayu :]
A lovely message Ayumi Hamasaki wrote in her fanclub blog the other day. I think it's worth a read, even if you have no idea who Ayumi Hamasaki is! haha. This message has inspired me, and I hope it can do the same for you ♥

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Congratulations to all those who celebrated "Coming-of-Age Day"!!!!! (More about Coming-of-Age day here)

Didn't you expect it, each of you, with your head full of memories and with a beating heart?

Especially girls, you certainly prepare for this event for a long time, asking yourselves what hairstyle, what makeup, what nails and particularly what clothes you will wear ...

Bah, actually it's this anxiety which is happy! ♪

Well, that's only my point of view. You can skip that. It doesn't bother me, but I don't think anything necessarily changes because we have reached the 20th year in our lives.

So you are an adult now!! Perhaps people also tell you that, but you know, whether you're a child or an adult, I think it's up to each of you to assess yourselves, and I would say that there are days that you feel like an adult and others that you feel like a child, and it's great like that.

It's something which is common to us all, including me also of course. We aren't robots but human beings made of flesh, and therefore it's by definition, impossible to be perfect.

This isn't a negative comment, and I think it's this flaw that is the most characteristic and most beautiful part of human beings.

And what I'm saying is that there is no need to take for reference our age, which is just a simple number, even if it has existed since the beginning of the world.

Nobody can do what I do myself.
But I'm not like this because I'm an artist named "Ayumi Hamasaki."
It is because the human being that I am, there is only one in the world.

You too. No one can replace you.
You are yourself in this world, the only person to be you.
There is no reason to be compared to another. There isn't any sense in doing that.

And we all can live that moment, not yesterday or tomorrow.

That is why, without spending time to turn over things of the past, or to tremble over the future, we must live every moment... to have nothing to regret. And continue like that because it's important.

Because that's how you can draw behind you a long, very long road on which you have left your footprints.

Even if the road is tortured, or even if there is mud, the important thing is to trample it with our own feet and and to leave our own marks.

Because "while we are born incomplete, we can completely realize ourselves."

This sentence is part of the lyrics of a song written to say that we shouldn't fear the days and months that go by -- the accumulated years and the fact that we are aging and deteriorating -- but rather, we should go towards its fulfillment.

Because we all start in a state when we can not stand up or even speak.

If we think this, don't you feel that nothing is really impossible?

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Is it any wonder I adore this woman? She has such a beautiful way of looking at life. She is indeed an amazing role model.