MIRAI CODE · You Don’t Have to Be Liked by Everyone
To You Who Is Afraid of Being Disliked
The harder I tried to be liked, the more it was myself I was making miserable.
Mirai — a Future Decoder who reads the sounds of your name
You read the other person’s face, and swallow what you were about to say.
Always braced, always careful not to be disliked — and always tired. Does that sound familiar?
Not wanting to break something with someone you care about. Not wanting to make waves at work. So the true feeling goes quietly down, and you arrange yourself around them instead.
In my readings, I meet so many gentle people who are wearing themselves away trying to be liked by everyone.
This was back when I taught decorative sushi-rolling classes.
There was a group of older women, friends, who came every month. "I want to make it for my grandchildren," they’d say. They were lovely to have.
But every time, they would say this: "Sensei, next time we want to make this design!"
So it wasn’t I who decided what to teach. It was their "we want to make—", and my job was to answer it.
I wanted to be a good teacher. I wanted them to be happy. So I could never once say "I’m afraid we can’t."
Every month I held my head in my hands, working desperately on a new design. Honestly — it was a great deal of stress.
One month, the morning of the lesson arrived and I still had nothing. I was close to tears. And then — a rescue from heaven (truly).
A typhoon came. Nurseries and schools all closed. A message arrived from the students: "Sensei, it’s dangerous, let’s cancel today!"
I have never been so relieved in my life.
…And then: wait. What exactly was I pushing myself this hard for?
Wanting to be seen as a good teacher, telling myself I had to meet every single request, backing myself into a corner.
The harder I tried to be liked, the more it was myself I was making miserable.
More than answering everything. More than being liked by everyone. Being someone who could still smile.
Being liked by everyone has a price, and you pay it
To be liked by all is to be shaped by all. A little of you goes to each person, and what is left in the middle grows thin.
And here is the quiet cruelty of it: the people who are pleased by that version of you are pleased by an arrangement, not by you.
Being disliked is not a failure. It is a result of having a shape.
Anything with an outline casts a shadow somewhere. To be occasionally disliked is simply evidence that you exist in a definite form.
The aim was never to be liked by everybody. It was to be properly known by the few who matter. And to be known, you have to be visible first.
What the sounds of your name have to say about this
The sounds of a name carry how a person naturally meets others — who reads a room instantly, who tunes to the mood before they even notice they’re doing it.
That sensitivity is not a weakness to be trained out of you. It is a real strength, currently aimed in every direction at once. Pointed at the few people who matter, it becomes something rare.
In the end
Today, just once — could you choose "what I actually want" over "what will be well received"?
You are allowed to be someone who is still smiling.