Last week I
waved goodbye to a summer of big-city news reporting.
And as with
every journalistic job I have had I am once again left humbled and amazed.
Humbled by
people. Amazed by stories.
I am in awe
of people sharing their stories, reaching out to newspapers with their hearts
and experiences on their sleeve, ready to put it out there, make their voices
heard.
I am
grateful for the people who give me their time and attention when I call,
approach or e-mail seeking comments, answers or knowledge. They could simply
say no (alright, some of them do, but mostly they are pretty polite about it),
they really are not obliged to offer me anything. Yet they do.
I am
touched by the voices, crackling over the phone from hard to reach destinations
and dangerous places, conveying a glimpse of a reality hard to grasp.
I am moved
by the struggles that people face in their lives and that they are willing to
share, for their own sake and for others.
I am
blessed to bear witness to laughter, love and all those small and big things
that make up a life and to be given the opportunity to put some of that into
writing.
I am
impressed by colleagues, who keep on doing this job, day after day, year after
year. Despite hateful e-mails, angry phone calls and being called advocates for
“fake-news”. They keep hunting, digging and writing. They work relentlessly,
with dedication and joy.
I have
spent this summer, like so many before, gathering, collecting and conveying
stories. And I am amazed to find that that well is never dwindling. My job as a
journalist is to create a space and a place for these stories to be shared, to
come alive and to be passed on. My pen is a mere vessel for the magic of
stories. And I find that to be a privilege and an honour.
But stories
are not confined to the newsroom. For me, some of the story-magic of this
summer has happened outside my work-place, or actually on the way to and from
my job.
During my
nightshifts and early mornings I have had the great pleasure to be taxi-chauffeured
to work. In those odd hours between midnight and sun-rise, I have been the
receiver of some pretty amazing stories. Instead of staring down my phone,
avoiding eye-contact or focusing on yawning out the window, I decided that
first night of June to be fully present in that taxi and inquire into the
stories of the drivers. I have heard tales of girlfriends (weirdly enough a lot
of them Finnish), of travels, families, financial situations and big
life-decisions. One man told me he uses his daughter´s Spotify when he drives
around at night. I don’t know, but something about that was so endearing it left
my heart a little bit softer. Another one happened to have a dad from Finland
and we ended up having a cheerful conversation in Finnish.
The trips
have usually never lasted more than 10 or 15 minutes, but they have always left
me feeling a bit more connected to the world and the people in it. And amazed
at how much you can learn about someone else in 10 minutes.
There are
stories everywhere, big and small. And they all deserve to be heard.
One of the
stories I have both been covering and taken great interest in (like the rest of
the world) is the disappearance of the journalist Kim Wall. A dedicated
journalist, whose voice will be greatly missed. Her studies in the US were
sponsored by the same organization that financed my journalism seminars in US
and Israel and something about seeing the organization’s dedication to the now
deceased journalist appear on my Facebook wall struck a chord with me. She was gone - and with her a lot of untold stories.
The loss of
an impactful voice highlights the need for more voices. In the wake of Kim Wall
and in the path of every other great storyteller and story sharer there is room
for more. There is a need for more. And everyone has a story. It is all about
getting curious enough to seek it out and being brave enough to share it. I
happen to have a profession where I get to do this on a daily basis. That makes
me pretty darn happy.
Cheers to the storyteller within us all!
Without stories we would go mad. Even in silence we are living our stories – Ben Okri