Dinner Drivel

(Note: I'm currently discovering old drafts I never published, and just pressing publish if they aren't entirely incomplete.)

Some people are really impressed by certain evidences of achievement--by masters degrees or doctorates, by the names of the schools that others attended, by their employment histories with high-profile companies. Others really enjoy sharing their achievements, sliding them into small talk--or even dominating entire conversations with their impressive scholastic and business accomplishments--as if this somehow affirms that you chose the right dinner partner indeed.

There are some people who really take note of these mentions, who are impressed by them, and who like to surround themselves with people who have perhaps been to Ivy-league schools, who have MBAs, who summer at their homes in the north and winter in their second homes in the south, and who drive their brand new cars in between the two, who know exactly how many square feet each of these homes have.

I personally don't give a shit.

Where you went to school and what company provides you with a desk and a paycheck and how many quality possessions you own--none of these things make me care any more or any less about you, because they don't really tell me anything about who you are. What I want to know are things like what do you really care about--what lights up your eyes and makes you raise your voice with passion? What have you done to make a difference, either in the larger world or in just one life? What makes you different from every other person in this restaurant, on the street, in the subway? I suppose for some, the answers to these questions are the things mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. I find dinner conversations with this type of person insufferable. All I want to do is to tell them to shut up, to point out that because they were so busy talking about themselves, they haven't asked a single question of anyone else, as if they presume they have nothing to learn from anyone else.

I want to have dinner with the genuine people, the people you can skip quickly through the small talk and get into real conversations about the things that really keep us up at night, like what we're going to do to make a contribution to the world, like what kind of people we're going to be when we're older, like what kind of people we're going to share our lives with and how we're going maintain these relationships, because we know that none of us is perfect, and that everything has the potential to fall apart if we don't work hard at the important things.