The Power of Conversation
“A major LIVE A GREAT STORY theme came from sitting around hostel dinner tables drinking wine, chef-ing food and talking about life with people from across the world.” - one of my go-to’s from the LIVE story, because it’s true.
Hostel dinner memories are some of my favorites.
Whether getting yelled at by an Italian for adding water to the pasta jar to get all the last bits into the pot, following these jacked and tatted Danish bros through the streets of Marakesh during Ramadan to hunt down local spices or celebrating New Year's Eve in Versailles with a group of local, childhood friends (I gave an epic toast), talking with people about life has made a significant impact on how I see the world.
Thinking back to before these hostel dinner experiences, I’ve often sought out these deep and thoughtful conversations at other points in my life.
Back in the early years I always wanted an elegant, mahogany filled, dimly cigar room for hosting important talks.
Shortly after high school I organized “Salons”, curated discussions that mimicked the early 18th Century Enlightenment movement about women and men gathering for intellectual discourse.
After moving to San Diego where I didn’t know anyone, I was always inviting new friends over for dinner parties.
Later this idea evolved into Eat Dinner, Save the World, a monthly dinner party my sisters and I host, with the kicker of only inviting people we met that month.
Most recently with LIVE A GREAT STORY I’ve started hosting “Community Convos” to connect dynamic people for engaging conversations about what it means to live a great story… digitally. But even that is an extension of the types of conversations that happen at our in-person events, like the picture above.
The conversations at each of these events are the real type of conversation that changes lives.
Convos where differing views dance for understanding and perspectives. Thoughts resulting from long-established trajectories collide. Ideas spark a new understanding of life. Other people’s lives, and yours, together.
In these active conversations with exchanges and rebuttals and perspective-ing and staunchness, review and eventual concession, where people talk and listen, where ideas are concept-ed, released, accepted, digested and volleyed, it’s here that life is figured out, questions answered, problems solved, together.
Those are the types of conversations that change your life.
