The Dinner Party
Never accept the seat assigned to you by someone else. Always choose your own.
“You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.”
–ALAN WATTS
Imagine you are sitting at a long table. A dinner party you’ve been invited to filled with unfamiliar guests. The table is immaculate. Draped in a fine ivory cloth covered with exquisite antique china, an endless array of gleaming crystal and silver utensils adorns each place setting. The crystal glints and winks with the flickering candlelight illuminating the table from the large candelabras punctuating the long table. The murmur of attendees begins to fill the room as the process of introductions and conversation begins.
You are guided to a seat not by your host but by a nattily dressed butler who leads to the one end of the table. Sitting down amongst the other guests already engaged, you try to find a thread of the conversation occurring between those around you. You grab onto a point put over the table by one of the others in the hopes of joining in.
Thus far, you’ve been generally ignored by your fellow guests. Each of which have climbed into their respective points of high ground in which they seek to defend or promote as part of the discussion. You feel as if you are less familiar with the topic than the others.
No matter, you are here and decide you must participate or suffer the remainder of the evening in a growing morose silence, remaining the passive observer. So you select a position similar to another near you and vainly attempt to jump in. Your first attempt fails due to everyone working hard to best each other with some ill formed but forceful quip, comment or observation that makes up for its thinness. Five people surround you, all leaning in, waiting for their turn to talk.
You try again, louder this time. All the while one of the others refuses to yield his soapbox. Finally, he does, leaning back to a generous sip of wine, looking at you with mild irritation for your interruption. After all, he was on a roll.
Recognizing this, you hesitate and there is a moment of silence at the table. A moment later, the small group picked up where they left off before your interruption, leaving you on the periphery of the conversation.
You find a growing frustration with your seat, as the conversation remains shallow. The points made seeem to you to be authored in order to frame the speaker in an important light. As an insider. Influential. Important. Someone to be admired and listened to. Not to be questioned or trifled with. In looking at their costumes, how they behave and position themselves at the table they seek to have the upper hand and work hard to demonstrate how flawless their lives are. None of the others seem to take notice given how hard they seem to be working on their own curation.
It all feels wrong. Slightly off. You were invited to the same party as each of them. You have a rightful place at the table as they do. Yet, something seems to be off with the experience.
You can either retreat to scrolling on your phone placed in your lap placed discreetly between you and the edge of the table or you can begin to indulge from the bottomless glass of wine sitting in front of you to blur out the rest of the evening. Anything for a distraction from the painful seat assignment forced upon you. You begin to wish you’d never accepted the invitation or instead long for its far off conclusion.
Your existence here is uncomfortable, but you are stuck.
Are you? No one told you that you could not get up. After all, there are several empty seats throughout the other guests around the long table. You sit, freting over being castigated by your host for such an uncouthe move. Or you fear your departure will challenged by those sitting around you, aghast and insulted by your rudeness. You fear they would be offended and speak ill of you to your face or worse, behind your back. So you stay seated, enduring the remainder of the evening in sullen boredom.
Instead you choose to not do that.
Instead, you rise, smile and step away without a word. You are surprised to notice that your fellow guests are so engrained with what each of them is trying to say to the other, they don’t even notice your departure. For the rest of the evening they will not give your absence any more thought than if you were there sitting amongst them in relative silence. After all, this isn’t really a conversation but a round robin of puffery and positioning. It seems to be a familiar sport for each of them, in which they are all adept.
You walk down the table noticing groups of conversationalists. Some pay you no heed, so you slowly move on. Nearing the other end of the room, you suddenly feel a different energy, quickly making eye contact with another guest who looks at you and smiles with kind and familiar eyes. Although you’ve never seen this person, the energy here you find instantly more comfortable than the other end of the table. You motion to the guest asking if the seat next to them was open.
Receiving a warm smile and the seat is pulled back for you. You find that the conversation is decidedly different. A topic familiar to you and those engaged articulate interesting observations and more importantly—questions, one of which you catch and adeptly through back into the dialogue.
The remainder of the evening is a blur, time folds and the dinner is over in what seems like an instant. You have found yourself at home with your new dinner companions.
Within a few moments of moving, your choice of a different seat at the table has allowed you to explore new depths of your curiosity, knowledge, perspective and even who you believe yourself to be.
One of your fellow conversationalists has encouraged and challenged you to try something new. An adventure in a far away place. Not to worry, she has friends there whom you can connect with. You will love them. As you stand, some of you agree to meet again again in a few weeks as the party begins to wane. You feel energized.
As you walk towards the door with one of your new acquaintances, you glance at the other end of the table, grateful for your decision to move, as fearful as it was to choose to do so.
Your former table mates stands behind their chairs in a loose group. Each on their phones, consumed with curating a social perception on the smashing success of their evening and the exclusive group they were with. Or perhaps engrossed in whatever is next for them that night or even what they’ve missed over the course of the evening.
You don’t pity them, however in one case, you do understand. As you move to the exit, you make eye contact with one of your former conversationalists. And, for a split second as your eyes meet, he drops his mask. You see in him your previous self. You recognize the forlorn look of resignation to the place and reality he finds himself; and his desire, as well as his paralyzing fear of leaving what he knows behind. In some ways, as his mask quickly returns, you know he envies the jump you’ve taken.
Turning your back from the table, you silently wish him grace and the courage to find his own path out.
As you exit, your host intercepts you with a smile, commenting they had noticed you had moved during dinner. You begin to stammer over an apology but your host smiles broadly and says, clasping your shoulder, “my dearest friend, there are no rules that say you can’t choose differently. You should find the seat that is meant for you instead of one shown to you. There are no assignments. Only perceived ones. I am so happy you chose to find what was meant for you and enjoyed your evening. That was my whole goal in the first place.”