Series 01 - Episode 01

English version What would you have done?

Most people never have the opportunity to discover whether the values they believe in are actually their own, because life rarely applies enough pressure to separate genuine conviction from habit, culture, upbringing, religion, social expectations, or simple convenience. We inherit ideas from parents, schools, churches, countries, and communities, and as long as life remains reasonably stable there is often little reason to challenge them, much less abandon them.

But what happens when stability disappears?

What happens when the beliefs that once explained the world no longer satisfy you, when the culture that shaped you is not the culture in which you live, when success turns into failure, and when decisions that once seemed unquestionably correct produce consequences you never imagined? More importantly, what happens when you can no longer blame circumstances, bad luck, other people, governments, employers, spouses, religions, or society, and are forced to confront the uncomfortable possibility that some of the most important outcomes in your life originated in choices you freely made yourself?

Those are the questions that run through 5 Times From Zero.

Over the course of nearly six decades, Kim Pedersen lived in worlds that rarely overlap. He was raised inside a fundamentalist Christian environment before rejecting religion entirely through years of questioning and reflection. He spent large parts of his life between Denmark and Japan, navigating two societies whose assumptions about responsibility, freedom, community, loyalty, success, and belonging often point in very different directions. He experienced periods of financial hardship and periods of significant professional success, working in roles that ranged from taxi driver to diplomat, corporate executive, and entrepreneur, only to find himself repeatedly confronting the possibility that everything he had built could disappear far more quickly than it had been created.

Episode 1 begins at one of those moments.

As a powerful typhoon approaches Japan in September 2005, a man who believed he was building a future there finds himself preparing to leave the country with no clear path forward and no certainty that the next chapter of his life will be any better than the one that has just collapsed. The immediate circumstances are personal, but the questions they raise are universal. How much of our identity is tied to our profession? How much comes from family, nationality, culture, belief, or achievement? If those things are taken away one by one, does anything essential remain, or do we discover that far more of our self-image depended upon external validation than we were willing to admit?

The story does not offer easy answers. Instead, it places the reader inside situations where competing values collide and where every available choice carries a cost that only becomes fully visible years later. Again and again, the reader is invited to stand at the same crossroads and consider what decision they might have made with the same information, the same pressures, the same fears, and the same hopes.

Would you leave a belief system that had shaped your entire understanding of reality?

Would you willingly abandon security in pursuit of opportunity?

Would you choose personal freedom if it meant accepting uncertainty?

Would you make the same sacrifices a second time if you knew how the story ended?

These questions become even more complicated when examined through the lens of two cultures often recognized as their opposites. Throughout the series, Japan and Denmark are not merely locations but contrasting frameworks for understanding obligation, independence, loyalty, success, failure, and the meaning of a life well lived. By moving between them, the story continually challenges assumptions that many people accept without ever noticing they have made them.

At its heart, 5TimesFromZero is an exploration of decision-making, belief, resilience, identity, and personal responsibility conducted under circumstances that leave little room for comforting illusions. It asks whether wisdom is gained through success or failure, whether values emerge from religion or from human experience, whether belonging is something we inherit or something we create, and whether a person who repeatedly loses everything can begin again without eventually becoming someone entirely different.

The events matter because they happened. This is based on an entirely true story.

The questions matter because they belong to all of us.

And they lead, repeatedly, to the same challenge:

If you had been there, knowing only what he knew at the time, what would you have done?

Watch the companion video: https://youtu.be/Nquu96k0yv4 The book contains more details.