It may be that I finally recognize who my peers are, or it may be that age makes me value them. Either way, sitting down to a slow meal of conversation and laughter with people you respect and enjoy seems increasingly important in life. I wonder if I just came to this realization late?
There is a rich dynamic when it’s working, like group improvisational music, with riffs and forms and deferrence and ambition. I like to sit at a table with people who are smart, know things I don’t, make me laugh with funny stories, listen and come back with a sharp turn.
I have in the past convened a group of gearheads to talk tech, but this time around I had it in mind that tech might give way to something broader, and it does. It’s important to be yourself, many of the parts of yourself, and have them be accepted, recognized, appreciated by a group you can respect in turn. But it’s especially satisfying to reach out from technology to children and family, politics and philosophy, good deals and traps to avoid.
Everyone should find or form a group so they have a place to relax and be known in that way, to have a pack of minds to call on for questions, to be entertained over a meal.
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