Suitable Magic
Last night I dreamed that I was in 念萱老師’s class sharing my magics, thus I want to write them down. My 5 magics and some reflections about interviews.
Suitable Magic
When I started learning and doing interview as an amateur, I have ever asked myself “am I suitable to do interviews?” Which kind of people are suitable to do so? I’m so introverted…
I think… English is also my disadvantage. In 2017, one day I went to interview a Filipino beauty pageant in Taiwan, this event was held by Filipino migrant workers. I was at that moment accompanied by my Taiwanese friend, who is rich and used to study in UK and spoke a very fast and fluent British English. In the beauty pageant, we went together to interview a model, who was also a factory Filipino migrant worker. I used my poor English to talk to him, while my friend spoke English confidently to him. After a while, I had an observation. I found that this Filipino worker was more willing to talk to me rather than my friend. Me, a person who comes from the worker class family and spoke not good English, seems for the interviewee I’m more friendly.
Since then, I started thinking about that — would it be possible that sometimes our disadvantages could become our advantages?
Such as my bad English?
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Such as… I’m introverted — that means I have more sensitive feeling that can feel the atmosphere and the air between me and the other person?
It reminds me, my friend 阿德 used to tell me one wisdom about people with the poorness. He said, the poorness, or in other word we say “lack of something”, is not necessarily to be negative. After 阿德 told me this in that period of time, I interviewed a lot of people with “the lack of something”, the hostesses and homeless interviewees, to help 阿德’s NGO write articles about the rethinking / unlearning about poorness, lack of something.
At that moment, my biggest understanding and spark is — the lack of something is also one kind of owing and having.
For example, I am not rich, it means I own the experience of struggling in the economic disability and try to make effort to survive. This experience is that the rich people could not own.
For example, I don’t have a happy childhood like others, which used to give me a sense of disappointing and sadness, however, it was because of my sad childhood memory that bring to me the ability of feeling painful and be sensitive to listen to the surrounding and also listen to the interviewees.
But of course, sometimes I still questioned myself am I suitable / do I qualify to do the interview / to make this work? And when I found I have this worry again, I like to look at this sentence again from the book I like:
Life in a monastery — I like that it allows everyone to join. You don’t need to be very clever to become a monk or a nun. You don’t have to excel at school, or even be especially mature in mind, to enter a monastery. What you need is simply to show kindness, and then do your best.
— I May Be Wrong, by Björn Natthiko Lindeblad
