How does one traverse through the river of life?

Or rather

Is there a correct way of navigating through life?

It's a question that ponders individuals—like ourselves—whether there is a predetermined blueprint that leads to our satisfaction. We often face the warnings and premonitions of our elders such as our parents, and similarly-aged individuals like siblings or friends to avoid a certain path we’d regret in the long run, yet we've never really understood that sentiment. In the early years of our adolescence, we’d have that specific belief deep within our hearts, and we’d follow that way of thought throughout the years—no matter how contradictory it seemed— because it gave us the feeling of fulfillment, or a sense of goal in mind per se. We were born in this world without any direction, until that one certain thing in our lives arrived, and in the blink of an eye, that is now our ultimate goal.

Exposing one of my personal—and regrettable—stories during my adolescence, I used to be obsessed with this game called “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang,” with my greatest desire to have all the skins in the game. I was 16 back then with no job, and the best way I could gather was to wait on discounts, vigorously budget my money, and even cut spending on my food just to buy the latest and expensive skins that cost more than my weekly allowances. I'm not even that good with the game, as I'm just an average player with average skills, but the satisfaction of other people approaching me with that praise of having rare skins gave me that toxic push of collecting as many skins as possible and having that grin of victory as I set goals with myself on beating skin counts from other players within my community. But alas, once I have hit the top—beating the statistics of the people who I deemed below me because of my skin count—I should feel happy with completing the set-out purpose that I have instilled in myself, and yet, sitting above everyone, I feel unfulfilled despite having everything.

What I had believed was the correct pathway for my life crumbled in front of me as it turned into sour bitterness as I saw the skins I bought in resentment—hoping that I could convert it back into cash that I had wasted upon it. What I thought was my purpose, my desire, and my dedication in living through life, was just a temporary impulse for the validation of others—and myself. Suddenly, the game became less popular, and my interests shifted away. I suddenly realised that the glory—and the reason—why I played the game in the first place is the team gameplays, and banter with players, and that adrenaline joy in winning. There's nothing more with that, and yet at the time, I had set myself with a goal I didn't foresee that it's just a temporary pleasure. ***

Despite everything that Musashi had done, there is still a pathway to redemption—altering the ways of your core thinking that you had followed throughout your life. Though my story above may not be filled with violence, we can all see ourselves within the story of Musashi Miyamoto in the conceptual sense. Musashi is a person who has lived his life with the sword and aimed for an accomplishment in the complete mastery—and the way—of the sword, and his way of accomplishing that fact is to defeat people who he deemed worthy of a match, and once he had defeated them, he'd crown himself as the more powerful of the two. His lust for power and the craving desire to be at the top have led him on a path where he'd struggle to get himself back from his starting point. For hundreds of chapters, we have seen the desired uprisings of a character who's being dragged down whenever he tries as hard as he can. At some point in the manga, Musashi felt the dissatisfaction of his accomplishments to a gravitating degree, something you can't just walk away from—at least how Musashi would believe it. After all, it's hard to accept that the years' worth of work and the nights of doubts that you've pondered turned out to be just the wrong way of traversing through life. His perception of the way of the sword is wrong.

But even if you’re on the wrong path this entire time, it doesn't mean that it is the end of your journey in life.

Despite everything that Musashi had done, there is still a pathway to redemption—altering the ways of your core thinking that you had followed throughout your life. Though I understand the difficulties in realizing that sentiment—particularly in Musashi’s case, where he had dedicated his entire life to the flawed guidance of the sword—life does not give halts in your lifespan when you're in your realization stage, but it crumbles the walls and gives you opportunities to rebuild it in a better and respectable manner. Musashi realized this by fully encapsulating the lives that he had lost and the signs that he had ignored—or blamed on something else—and instead accepting that life is always going to be like that. Make the most of what you have—in a stoic sense—and master it. The things that you have lost may or may not come back—that's up to life to decide—but rather than clinging to what is unreachable, you'd be given an opportunity to realize that maybe that thing that you're trying to reach for is not what your heart wants as you believed it to be, and that's okay. The mistakes of the past does not define Musashi, but it's his building blocks in providing a stern foundation for his life—recognizing the mistakes, and his lapses in judgement.

Perhaps true strength in the way of the sword lies in knowing when not to draw it.

Poorly transitioning back to my embarrassing story, I realized about a year later that spending money on skins does not give me the satisfaction—or that sense of fulfillment—of completing my greater place in the world. The resson why i feel like i was fulfilled is because i was praised for having rare skins, but the moments where I truly enjoyed was where w all of us had an amazing ranked game. That was the joy. But ever since then, everyone in my circle had moved on from the game, and for that, I did as well. Some nights, I get a huge dose of frustration upon myself for spending a huge amount of money, but I have no ounce of regret. It gave me a guide of what I should or should not invest my time and money in and taught me how to restrain myself from getting what I want and have a greater understanding of what I actually want for myself in my journey through life. It might not have given me a proper blueprint on how to live, but it did give me insights about myself and how I want to live my own life.

Life will always be filled with lessons, obsessions become trivial, and the pain we've felt throughout our journey gives us the resilience to grasp the fact that the journey of life has no predetermined blueprints of the correct flow—but it's a built-up path of the individual based on their personal growth. Whether there are big events that changed you or many small moments clumped into one, everyone has a fragment of Musashi’s journey within us. ***

Despite its unfinished status, that shouldn't hold you back from reading Vagabond. Its deep philosophical themes, convincing characters, and beyond-gorgeous artwork shape triangular points of perfection—transcending beyond what storytelling can bring in any form of medium. So much so that what I have shared above barely touches the themes of the series. There's still a bunch of philosophical and personal views I couldn't tackle, yet there are other perspectives from other reviews here on Anilist and beyond this website—including you. ***