What does “Follow Society” mean for Enzo?
Enzo: I am a member of the Reapra Taiwan Team and I help with connecting with potential Founders so they can set off their journey into finding themselves in life and entrepreneurship. Perseverance is the main key for me in life and I believe in keeping heads up high for the better of society and human life itself.
When we use language, we often mean different things because of different life experiences and life stories.
Darryl Lim 00:00
What do you mean by FOLLOW SOCIETY?
Enzo 00:02
You have to listen to what your elders say about you, and also, like, you need to follow the path that your elders set for you. Like, hey, I want you to be a doctor. Okay, I'll be a doctor. But even though I have no passion to do that. Or "I want you to be this", but I don't want to be "that". I want to make my own path, you know, I want to do something. I want to do something for myself. I want to be happy and to be successful without people telling me what to do.
Darryl Lim 00:37
When do you realize that? That you want to MAKE YOUR OWN PATH without people telling you what to do?
Enzo 00:43
I had a conversation my mom before I left for Taiwan, and I said, Hey, Mom, I don't want you to like, don't like tug on my shirt every now and then. That's the reason why I wanted to go to a foreign country, because I want to learn for myself. I want to see the outside world. I want to make new friends without people like deciding what I have to be.
Darryl Lim 01:11
Without other people deciding what you have to be, and therefore, you want to create your own path.
Enzo 01:20
Yes, I want to grow. I want to grow as a person. And there is no better place than swimming with the sharks, you know?
Darryl Lim 01:29
Okay, okay, say more. About the swimming with the sharks.
Enzo 01:35
I learned that if you're like in a hard situation, or if you're feeling like, pretty much left alone, sometimes you have your own thoughts that would bring you down mentally, right? But eventually there's going to be a realization where you're like, you know what? I don't know. I don't have to listen to everyone. I'm just gonna do my own thing. And if someone doesn't like it, I don't care. I'll just go with it. Like it's good that you care for me. It's good that you're giving me, like, suggestions or criticism about the things I do, and sometimes I do take it into consideration, but you don't have to nitpick every single thing that I want to do.
Darryl Lim 02:26
What was the pushing point for you? I know you said the conversation with your mom. You told your mom that you wanted to go to a foreign country to study, but what motivated that conversation?
Enzo 02:39
I'm not going to lie. I'm more of a lone wolf than anyone else. A lot of my other colleagues... we have a union in my university, for my country, and I'm generally like, I barely even interact with my union, except for a few others, and I feel like they're doing the same thing, they are: one, finding job in service, two, finding job in factories, three, they hang out with each other. But for me, one, I hang out with international students, not people from my country. Two, I have different interests from my country's friends, and also three, I want to pursue different opportunities away from what they want to do. I don't want to work in a restaurant. I don't want to work in a factory. I just want to do something that's best for me, and also good for my study career, good for my future career as well. Because what good is there when you have to work service four years in a row? It's not going to be put in your CV.
Darryl Lim 02:40
And why is this important for you to be able to do all these?
Enzo 03:43
I like to be different, that's for sure. And I like to like, hey, society is telling you to be a doctor. Society is telling you to do this, do that. But I didn't listen to society, and I made something for myself.
Darryl Lim 04:18
Yeah. What does BEING DIFFERENT mean for you?
Enzo 04:20
For me, it's not a gimmick. Like, I don't want to be like, Oh, I'm different in front of everyone else. It's so cringe. It's so corny. It's just that I just want to, like, do something that no one has done before, and do things my own way and be successful my own way, like, live comfortably in the future, maybe with a wife, maybe without a wife, who knows? And then spend my life going around, doing the things I like and also like selling the things I like as well.
Darryl Lim 04:54
When did you first realize this, that you want to do something, to create something of your own, that might be very well be different from society?
Enzo 05:05
I think I just don't want to fall in line with everyone else. That's the reason. I don't fall in line.
Darryl Lim 05:11
Talk more about the phrase "FALLING IN LINE", with everyone else.
Enzo 05:16
I do hear this in the internet, right? Like just following everyone else with a trend or with how they do... it's good to hear the experiences of people saying like they found job with this or with that, or even a more minuscule thing, like, oh, I found this coffee shop. But then, because of that, it became, like, trending and booming, and it became mainstream to the point where you don't really like to do that. I'm not a mainstream person. I want to be like the subculture. You know, I'm a niche kind of person. I like pro wrestling. I like cars. When you hear an Indonesian say they like pro wrestling, they're like, Huh? It's just a gradual growth where I kind of realized that I don't have to make myself happy by following a trend. I'm not a consumer. I don't want to be perceived as a sheep, you know?
Darryl Lim 06:20
What does BEING A SHEEP mean for you?
Enzo 06:22
In a farm, there's multiple sheep, and then there's the sheep herder, and then there's a dog, right? So sometimes the dog would guide all the sheep, like, together into their barn or something else. And then, like, sometimes there's this black sheep who just climbs out of the cage and then just walks off. Who knows what will happen to it?
Darryl Lim 06:47
Yeah. So you are the black sheep?
Enzo 06:50
I'd like to consider myself as a unicorn.
Darryl Lim 06:53
Oh, unicorn, wow. Okay, before college, were there any personal experiences that told you, "I want to be that unicorn."?
Enzo 07:03
I don't think so. It's during college where I learned it. There was one moment I went to a wrestling show in a mall. Free of charge, by the way. Before that, I've been a very long-time wrestling fan watching the American style, like WWE, you know, and when I watched, like Japanese, Taiwanese wrestling in there, it struck a nerve. And it's like, wow, how did I miss all of this during all this time? And when I think about it, I am the only person in the campus, and also the only Indonesian person to actually attend these kind of shows.
Darryl Lim 07:41
Yeah. Tell me more about the wrestling shows. What exactly about the wrestling shows draw you to them?
Enzo 07:48
It's a different style, like Taiwanese wrestling is like a mix of Americans, theater, typical style and Japanese like sports style. I really like to call it like strong spirits, you know. And it's also taking place in like a warehouse. So, like a warehouse far away in Taoyuan. So like I would go to Taoyuan, take a two-hour bus ride, take a 30-minute walk from Taoyuan station all the way to that warehouse. A warehouse, you know? A warehouse like the place to put machinery, and it's still there.
Enzo 08:12
Okay, okay, continue. What happens there?
Enzo 08:34
It's like just meeting the people there: the wrestlers, the organizers, the fans. It opened my mind on this type of, like, niche market, about why they like this, about why did they join this, who are their idols, what brought them into this? You know, it's like, I found my own people. I found my people.
Darryl Lim 09:02
Nice. What about you personally? What draws you there? I know you said the warehouse. I know the kind of like journey that you make to really go to the wrestling show. But what about the wrestling show itself draws you there?
Enzo 09:19
It's the SOUL. The soul. I think that anything, anything in the world, is great if there's a soul in it. And you cannot really see that much soul in corporate entities right now, or like in very big arenas, if I go to a wrestling show or a basketball match in a big arena. It's great. It's entertaining, but where's the soul in it, you know? But if I go to a warehouse and I see these guys like fighting for a contract or fighting for a bigger opportunity in Japan or America, it's like an art being painted right in front of me. And it's like their personal lives and also their theatrical ideas being put into life right in front of me: with the hits and the blows. And that draws me into pro wrestling, the soul of pro wrestling, the soul of sports.
Darryl Lim 10:18
And what is your soul? How would you describe your soul?
Enzo 10:23
I am a very stubborn guy.
Darryl Lim 10:27
Say more?
Enzo 10:28
I kind of realized how stubborn I am when I came back from Taiwan and my elders are saying, hey, you have to wash your hands every time you need to go outside and go to the gym. No, you cannot walk to the gym even though it's five minutes away from your house. No, I want, I just want to walk. I just want to do cardio. I want to do this. I want to do that. But it's not like spoiled kid kind of stubborn? But I want to, like... there's a benefit to me being stubborn. I can see the benefit of me walking to the gym. I can see the benefit of me going to this friend's place, so I could, like, see them and I could make them happy. Yeah, I don't have to listen to everything my elders say. I'm already living in Taiwan for like, three plus years now, alone, and I didn't really have any problem with it, like I nothing bad happened to me yet.
Darryl Lim 11:31
Okay, and this soul... other than stubbornness, how else will you describe your soul?
Enzo 11:41
Spirit, strong spirit. So from Japanese wrestling, and also, not only that, from like sports in general, like, uh, having that sportsmanship and having a sports soul like, it drives you to get up after you fall down really hard. It happened to me. There's a rain, right? And then I was wearing some very worn-out slippers. I slipped. I fell down. I hit my head on concrete. But then what I did: I got back up after two seconds. And you have to take this into account as a businessman or something else. Like, if something bad happens your business like, let's say profits are down, or you're close to... you're close to bankruptcy, you need to have the perseverance, the spirit, and the soul to like, bring it back up gradually, not too fast, not too slow, obviously, but gradually. Like, keep your head up.
Darryl Lim 12:51
It's about keeping your head up and all that. And that's something that you also gradually... your "soul" is something that you also gradually realized during college?
Enzo 13:02
Got it from my dad.
Darryl Lim 13:04
Oh, say more. Say more.
Enzo 13:06
I don't want to go too personal into this, honestly. But I remember, before I went to college, he was like in a very bad financial situation, especially during covid. Covid, that was like horrible timing, but luckily for us, we pulled through, and I got into the position I am right now. And I'm very happy for that. I'm very happy for it.
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