On Saturday we threw a party for my 40th birthday. We invited old friends and new - family, coworkers, bloggers, wine tasters, people from all sides of my life. It was what you'd expect a party to be: hard work to prepare for, a little chaotic to execute, and a lot of fun to experience and remember.
It must have been a little odd for my coworkers (just to pick an example) to look around at 30-odd unfamiliar faces and wonder what to say. Should I have celebrated my birthday with cupcakes at work, and later opened a fine bottle with my fellow wine afficionados, and so on, just to keep them all comfortable? I don't think so. I've become convinced that we need these aimless conversations with new people to expand our lives. There is also a place for ever-deeper conversations with those who know us well, but that isn't enough. They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say we all need villages. If there has been any lesson in the last 18 months of my life, that is it.
There are some pictures on Facebook (my profile is public). More have been graciously posted by Heidi Cool at her flickr stream. Thanks Heidi!
You are very right, Jeff. If you want to be technical about it, everyone at the party was a new friend to me. But since we're living in cyber time, I'm finding that the friendships are growing deep at warp speed.
ReplyDeleteAs for the really, really new people to me, I enjoyed talking to many of them. You hang with a very fun and kind crowd. You are blessed and wise to the ways of friendship. And such a young'n too!
Thank you! Your compliments strain my capacity for self-deprecation!
ReplyDeleteThese are all good people. I owe much of it to Meetup, where you can meet an awful lot of people to see if they fit.
Depth is another matter. Still terra incognita to me, I'm not sure how to navigate there. We'll see.