Category - Bravery

Let’s sit down to an old-fashioned potluck dinner and open a few bottles of wine. You bring your favorite dish, the special one you make for your family during your religious holidays or regional celebrations, and I’ll bring mine. I hope you will love the Mudiga steaks – breaded and fried beef cutlets. I’ll spoon on homemade tomato sauce, grated Parmesan cheese and serve it on a fresh Italian bread roll made by a local baker, who also happens to be a relative of mine.

While we pass around the dinner plates and open another bottle of wine, I listen while you tell me everything about your life -– your parents, the house you grew up in, the kids in your neighborhood, your longtime friends, your siblings, and crazy relatives too. I learn how you spent summers, places you’ve traveled and places you hope to visit someday.

You tell me the music that makes you want to dance and we agree that 70s music still holds up. You tell me about a particular song that gets you every time you hear it on the radio. The artist must have crawled inside your head to write lyrics. Every word, every note, perfectly reflects the feelings of the day you lost someone close to your heart. I reach out and take your hand; the same song speaks to me too.

What do you like to read? Historical fiction? Courtroom drama? Satire? Biographies? What kinds of movies do you watch? Goofball comedies? Anything with a Superhero? Sappy Rom-Coms? Really? There’s so much we have common!

We tell a few funny stories about our work life; from the first job we had as a kid to our secret dreams to start a business.

You tell me a joke I don’t get but once you translate it we come to the conclusion that knock-knock jokes are terrible in any language, in any country on Earth.

Our meal is ended, our bellies satisfied and the wine bottles empty. We have run out of conversation for now except to admit, to our surprise, that we are more alike than different. We are both sensitive, kind, conflicted, fallible, loving, vulnerable, engaging, needy, compassionate, interesting human beings trying to live our lives in the best way we know how.

It’s not always hearts and flowers and sunshine and lollipops, this world of ours. But our children and the generations that follow deserve a place of kindness and peace, a place where their dreams and hopes and aspirations are given a fertile foundation to grow. We both believe in the future. We know we can do better. We must.

Before our dinner, before we laid eyes on each other, separated by miles, it was easy to mistrust you, despise you, and misunderstand you. We feared who and what we did not know. But sitting across from me, sure, we look different, wear strange clothing; you smell unique, our speech has a lilt or a twist that takes a bit of concentration to understand.

During this dinner you served me and I served you, like we would any friend. When I spoke you listened to me; then I listened to you. And when I didn’t understand your point of view, you explained it. When you disagreed with me, you were polite and allowed me my position and I yielded to you. Like real friends.

After this dinner we concluded that we want to live in peace, in harmony, in tune with one another, to accept each others flaws and points of view with the respect humans offer each other. Because we are all people on the same planet. Because that’s what humankind does to keep the planet alive and well.

BE F-G AWESOME TODAY!

Original graphic: Stephanie DelTorchio