This week someone posed the question, “If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be?”
My first thought was to choose the most unconventional person possible. I mean, the purpose of this hypothetical dinner would be to capture some new perspectives on the world, and so I would do well to choose someone utterly and completely different from me. The first person to come to mind was Lucy, the bipedal hominid who roamed the African forests millions of years ago. But then I realized there would be no actual dinner conversation. There might not even be any dining, what with how freaked out she would probably be. And she might even fling poo at me. So, yeah, maybe the best choice isn’t Lucy.
Then I thought about Jesus of Nazareth. I’d love to ask him to fact-check all those deeds that others have put on his resume. You know, walking on water, transforming stones to loaves, curing the blind, and whatnot.
But then I realized — wait — I don’t speak Aramaic. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t speak English like Max von Sydow in The Greatest Story Ever Told. There would be a frustrating language barrier. So, unless I would be satisfied to just hang out with the Savior and maybe take some selfies, the actual conversation wouldn’t live up to the hype. Same thing with Gautama Buddha, Mohammed, or Confucius.
Then I thought, I could have dinner with the ruthless, fanatical, merciless villain and man who made it socially unacceptable to wear tiny mustaches, Adolf Hitler. Assuming we could find ways to converse (I think he spoke some halting English), I could ask probing questions to possibly begin to comprehend how and why he came to do the abominable things he did. This would provide an opportunity to shape our understanding of evil in the world and make for some riveting conversation, especially if I could elicit the fiery speechcraft.
But then I began to think through the implications. I would be tasked with the incomprehensibly heavy burden of having to render Hitler’s thoughts somehow comprehensible to wide audiences. The responsibility would be massive! Such pressure! So much riding on the choice of every word! I’m not sure I’d be up to the task. I’d feel a lot better if I could bring along Ron Chernow or Walter Isaacson or someone. But that kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.
The purpose of this exercise is for me or you — the individual — to choose the person in history who could teach the most in a single sitting. It’s to absorb some great wisdom and recognize how it can bring new understanding, new awareness. It’s meant to influence the way you see the world.
Come to think of it, the hypothetical dinner exercise is similar to the going-back-in-time exercise to speak with your former self. And it’s also similar to the one-time do-over exercise where you could revisit an event of your past and handle it differently than the way you actually handled it. All these exercises seek to establish a link between some known perspective of the world and a whole new perspective. This new perspective — whether it comes from Jesus, Hitler, your future self, or anyone else — could potentially change the trajectory of your life.
Then I realized I had been thinking about this all wrong. When faced with the thought of choosing any one historical figure among all the greatest, most colossally towering figures of human history, I naturally assumed that the purpose would be to uncover some universal human Truths, with a capital T. You know, do the dinner, tap some Truths, and share them with the world. Oh, and get selfies of course. “Pics or it didn’t happen.”
It suddenly hit me that the truths with the biggest potential to change the trajectory of my life are probably not the universal human truths like “Love your neighbor” or “The Golden Rule.” No, the biggest trajectory changers for my life are probably the truths that are specific to my life.
I suddenly knew who I would choose as my dinner companion: my dad. He passed away when I was in my early 20s, and so I feel like our time together was too short.
I realize that choosing my dad from all the characters of history sounds cliché, like something you’d see on a Hallmark card. But we have much more in common, know more of the same people, and have so much more to talk about than I would with some stranger whose life was separated from mine by centuries and languages and cultures. In fact, I am the same age now as my dad was when he passed away. During his life, he smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish, and seemed to eat little more than red meat at every meal, if it was available. For our dinner, I’d probably urge him to order a salad. And he’d probably recommend the filet. Rare. Extra butter.
What person would you choose?