I only learned about him recently. Right now, working towards a first-for-Japan challenge of my own, a friend told me: “there was someone like this.”
The title was footage of Nobukazu Kuriki, the mountaineer — “The Last Everest Attempt.”
Uneasy about the word “last”, I watched the footage and learned how his life had ended. And afterwards, in a way that gave me a great deal to think about, I came to understand the “what for” he had wanted to pass on through his challenge.
I resolve to keep telling this
Taking on something nobody has ever done must have carried difficulty and anxiety beyond imagining. I understand that clearly now, precisely because I am in the middle of a challenge of my own.
What he wanted to tell people and what I want to tell people turned out to be so alike that it genuinely startled me.
I am sure everyone who backed him looked forward to the view at the far end of his challenge. I feel exactly the same — I want to see the view at the far end of mine, together with the people beside me.
Is it forbidden to die?
Reading through article after article, I found the truth of a man who has died left unresolved, and all sorts of criticism pouring in around it.
“What was it you were so committed to? Dying makes it meaningless.”
“You shouldn’t have died.” “He was made to climb, and died for it.”
But I think this: for him, it was not meaningless at all. He was not made to take on that challenge by anyone else, and he never regretted the road he chose. His life reached its end on Everest, at the far end of a challenge — didn’t he see that commitment through to the end, exactly as he meant to?
Anyone who achieves something is criticised until they succeed
Right now, carrying cancer myself, working towards a challenge a year from now, I hear all sorts of opinions.
“Get the cancer treated first, get properly well, and take the challenge on again in four years.” “That doesn’t look like someone who values her own life.”
I say nothing back. People carry all kinds of values, and there is no single right answer. However much someone protects their own life, nobody else can actually take my illness in my place.
I know full well that whoever I ask, they will tell me not to
This challenge has taken five years, and I have only just reached the point of being one year away. There have been plenty of walls along the way even before this.
And then, in the middle of it, cancer was found in me. I do think finishing treatment first and going in good health would be the ideal. If it had not been in the middle of this challenge, I might well have gone straight into treatment.
But — having treatment gives no guarantee of being well afterwards either. Nothing about life is certain, so I want to live in a way that leaves me with no regrets.
The reason I never fell to the bottom of despair is this challenge.
Everyone dies eventually. Which is exactly why I came to feel that spending the time left in despair would be a waste.
I will not let this chance go. I cannot let it go.
What do I “drive” for
Learning about Kuriki, I made myself a promise.
“I will live for his sake too, break through the limits fear of failure and denial put on the heart, and carry the baton forward to anyone who takes something on after this, or is about to.”
Removing the prejudice of denial and giving up
A challenge carries plenty of failure and setback with it. But what actually stops your feet is losing to your own heart. I hope, with everything I have, for a world where we can accept different values and cheer each other on, and where the time of a life is spent with a little less conflict in it.
Mr Kuriki — watch me. What you wanted to say, I will go on living to say it. My hands are together for you.