Fast confession – Jana Bobošíková about family: Failure will not divide us

Mrs Bobošíková, where have you been all these years? I remember you from television, talk shows, running for the elections and suddenly you completely disappeared from the media. When were you last seen publically? What have you been doing since then?

I last ran for the elections (unsuccessfully) during the presidential and then the parliamentary elections in 2013. After the results were announced I realised that after nine or ten years in politics there is no longer any interest in my ideas. So I decided to devote my time to my family, my business activities and myself.

That must have been a major decision. You have been in the media world for so many years…And the fact that there is no more interest in your ideas must be crushing.

It’s not crushing. It’s a fact that one should be able to accept in my opinion and should then direct his efforts elsewhere, where he can be successful and where he can be of benefit. My husband and I have always had business activities, which is why I became involved in one part of our business and started to develop it. I enjoy doing it and it gives me pleasure. We are also a very cohesive family, we love each other very much, but we basically live on three various continents. Although we always travelled a lot, we started to travel even more thanks to our family situation.

What do you do business in?

Distribution of various brands within the environment of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is something that I enjoy and that fulfils me, because it is nice to help women be beautiful and feel as good as possible.

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This year in August you will turn 55, you are now working with cosmetics so it is no surprise that you look so good, or do you also have another secret recipe?

Thank you! I take care of myself, which means not only my body, but particularly my mind, which I consider very important. I read different books to those I read when I was younger and I am interested in different things to those I was interested in previously.

Does this mean mediation, and yoga?

Yoga is involved, as well as various perception training and mental training. And of course a different lifestyle. It includes a lot of travel, I travel around the whole world in search of interesting experiences and information. All our family members work on themselves in this way. We have our coaches in various parts of the world.

I’m not sure I understand what this means.

It’s about something truly ordinary and possibly very difficult – change yourself and you will change your life. It’s about completely naturally, without resistance and with humility, to begin accepting everything that takes place around you. You will begin to start responding differently to things that possibly made you mad previously, made you angry or made you feel wronged. You will establish a different relationship with your body, your mind and your soul.

This must be a very long process…

It is an interesting process that I enjoy. I think that it is far from being finished, but I am glad that we set out on this path. It is a path that not only calms you, but also enables you to improve your physical and mental performance. It enables you to enter different dimensions in relation to time and distance. Even though one daughter lives in Los Angeles, the other daughter lives in Toronto and my husband lives in Siberia, I do not feel that we are distant from each other.

In Siberia?

Yes, my husband is in Asia, my daughters are in North America and I am in the Czech Republic. But I would say that we remain connected. It is sometimes nearly magical, we write each other the same things and say the same sentences, or speak to very similar people at the same time.

How often do you see each other? You must miss them very much.

My husband and I see each other relatively often, maybe once every two weeks. My daughters and I see each other five or six times a year. We plan these meetings and then we really enjoy them, because they mean organised relaxation and time shared together in the best sense of the word.

I would say that the distance does not divide us at all, but rather that it connects us. I have to say that I know much more about my daughters and my husband – about what they feel, what they desire, what they are afraid of and what they want – than I did maybe ten years ago, when my daughters were already studying, but when we were all much more often under one roof. My experience is that physical distance does not play such a great role and it doesn’t have to mean missing someone and being apart from them at all.

I read somewhere that you and your husband married again.

My husband and I married in 1986, which will be 33 years ago this year. At the time we married at the Town Hall on Staroměstské náměstí in Prague and we didn’t have a religious ceremony. But had been thinking about having a religious ceremony since our twentieth anniversary, because we are both christened as Catholics. We managed to arrange this on our thirtieth anniversary and we confirmed our marriage in the cathedral of Saint Vitus. It was very beautiful. The proper term is church convalidation of a civil marriage.

I won’t try to tell you that I was not dreaming about a beautiful dress dress. I really did find a beautiful dress with an enormous train, my daughters were the witnesses and they had the same romantic dresses. The ceremony was not just about faith and marriage, it also had an element of something lovely and feminine, which we treated ourselves to. There were a lot of humorous moments, for instance when I was choosing my dress the salon owner asked me what dresses my bridesmaids would be wearing. But the salon was full of all these lovely cute dresses for little girls. I thought that was funny, because my bridesmaid was 65 years old! Repeating a marriage after 30 years is different in many aspects to when a person marries for the first time at around 30.

That is quite rare in today’s world. How many people find their lifelong love, with who they can confirm their marriage after so many years?

On one hand it’s very intimate, on the other hand it§s normal for me. I have always wanted to marry someone I would stay with my entire life. I was probably lucky that my husband felt the same way.

I think we have a marriage just like anyone else. Of course things can get tempestuous sometimes, we naturally don’t have the same opinion of everything and we sometimes argue. But on the other hand our life together is so valuable to us that an argument, a setback or failure won’t divide us and I strongly believe that this is how it will be in the future. The more we see how our children appreciate our relationship and how important it is for them, the happier we are that our marriage has lasted. After all our experiences, our marriage is stronger and stronger. At least that is how I feel.

You recently staged a comeback with regard to your work as a presenter.

I didn’t stage a comeback, the situation was completely different. Imagine travelling to Korea to visit a bitcoin congress and then also to see some cosmetics. Then you are lying in your room and the telephone rings, someone is calling you from Prague. Luboš Xaver Veselý, a well known presenter who owns the XTV television channel, was calling me. He made me an offer saying that he would like me to interview people on his channel, like I did previously on Sedmička or Czech Television.

I hesitated a little because appearing on the screen after fourteens years away quite a bold step. But we did a camera test and I started to present for XTV. I conduct economic and political interviews of key figures from the field of Czech economy and politics. I do this in addition to my job, I enjoy it and I like doing it.

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You did this job for a number of years. But did you feel the need for a refresher course? Some speech training so your enunciation was correct….

I didn’t have speech training, but of course I remembered the valuable advice I received from professionals thirty years ago when I began my career as a reporter. Vocal placement, what to say or not say, how to sit straight, how to move in front of the camera and similar. I tried to remember all the advice I had received in the past and everyone who watches XTV can judge the result.

Who would you like to invite to your show? Who would you like to get your claws into?

I don’t have any influence on the choice of guests, nor is this my ambition. I want the viewer to find out as much as possible about the guests invited to appear on my show. That is my job, that is why I do these interviews. I don’t want to sound nasty, but I essentially don’t care who’s sitting in my studio.

You’re basically impartial and that’s how it should be.

Yes. I simply say “Ok, I’ll prepare for them” when the television management decides who should be invited and interviewed by me. I don’t know how satisfied my guests are with the result, but I do my job.

You were active in politics for many years. How do you view this period?

The elections in this country are democratic and the Chamber of Deputies and its members are the result of democratic elections. This is the reflection of a society and a people who say “yes, I want to be involved” on the day of the elections, they get up and go and vote. Everyone may have various motives for doing so. Someone is angry, someone is interested in the election programme, someone finds a candidate attractive, someone may like a particular person, someone may even just like the doughnuts! I don’t want to create caricatures, others may like the smoked sausage. The important thing is that people get up and go and vote – and they vote as they do.

But as a professional you have a different viewpoint. How do you like how things are? Would you change something?

If I had the power then I would change the proportional election system to a majority system. This means that it would be absolutely clear from the very beginning that the winner of the elections would truly be in charge. But that is all that I would change. Anything else is my personal political preference. I think that in a true democracy, the citizens should be capable of accepting someone they are not in favour of winning the elections.

And will you have any political ambitions in the future?

I don’t know. I really have no idea. Life has taught me to “never say never”. At this moment I am not running for any elections, I am not creating anything anywhere. But you never know what will be in five or ten years time. Life can truly be quite long.

Thank you for the interview Mrs Bobošíková.