This Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, said to be the world's most brutal rally —
everyone called it flat-out impossible, reckless, for me to take on,
so why was I actually able to pull it off?
Without question, it was the love of people, and the sheer energy of everyone's support!
That energy, starting here at home and spreading out across the whole world once I set off, carried me through every single piece of hardship they said was impossible,
and let me stand at the finish.
The circle of support that spread across Japan wasn't built on social-media reach — it was real, genuine connections, person to person,each one an actual bond.It spread by word of mouth, person to person, and in the end, so many newspapers and media outlets picked it up.
For someone who can't speak English, to actually communicate with the fellow competitors I'd be fighting alongside for 37 days, I laminated a translated English version of an article about me
and kept using it to share what this dream and adventure meant to me.
The volunteers who gathered from all over the world, and the connections with people I met crossing eight countries' borders —
I tried putting some of it into a video.
In a way… the love of people is carved into my heart even deeper than the adventure itself.
The whole world ended up on my side at that finish line
I also learned that anyone taking on a challenge that stands out, different from everyone else,
always runs into headwinds as part of the deal.
"There's no way you can do this!" "Someone like you couldn't possibly pull this off!"
In every kind of phrasing, true and false mixed together, plenty was said about me.
But, you know, here's what I think.
Every person carries a background you can't see from the outside,
and it's precisely because of everything they've been through that they can understand another person's pain,
and that's exactly what lets them shine.
Even people who look like they've had it easy, even people the world calls successful —
behind their past, behind everything that led them to where they are, they've lived through all kinds of darkness,
and it's precisely because they overcame that hardship
that they keep learning, keep acting,
in order to help someone else struggling with the exact same thing.
Something I've come to realize, having met so many different people, is this —
meeting another person is really meeting yourself.
There are so many things you can't notice on your own,
so many things you could never have overcome alone,
and what matters most is —
genuinely facing someone with everything you have,
genuinely cheering someone on with everything you have.
What you can do alone, by yourself, has real limits,but filter it through someone else's thinking, someone else's experience,and you sometimes find an answer you never could have imagined on your own.
Having finished this challenge, I've come to accept, much more broadly, the differences between one person's values and another's.
In a way, I'm even grateful to the people who gave me those headwinds!
Through this challenge I also experienced a great many “goodbyes.”
But! Even more than that, so many more “nice to meet you”s.
Every meeting happens for a reason, and you meet that person at exactly the right moment.
Because pain and struggle are always bound to become someone else's strength, eventually…
I'll keep moving forward, grateful, from here on too.