9 Lessons from 9 Months of Hosting Our Inner Lives

In April 2019, my dear friend, Igor, and I launched a dinner series we called Adam and Eve II to explore the dimensions of character. Inspired by David Brooks’ revival of Joseph Soloveitchik’s concept of Adam I vs. Adam II, (namely that there are two contradictory sides of human nature; the external, “resume” side and the internal “eulogy” side), we believe that magnifying our “eulogy virtues” is far more important than achieving our “resume virtues”. Our hope in launching this dinner series was that by coming together to explore these themes with friends and strangers alike we’d develop the vocabulary and understanding to live better lives by being better people.

While all that was and is true (I think), a few months in, we realized we were developing something much more soulful. We had created a space for the depths of our inner lives; for the part of ourselves that rarely gets the stage, the part that through our societal pressures and conceptions of success, we’ve buried. Over multiple course dinners and even more bottle of wine, we heard, and shared, some of the deepest fears, loneliest moments, kindest acts and most painful histories. Our Inner Lives was born. 9 months in, 20 different dishes cooked and 50 or so dinner guests later, I’ve taken this cold, grey, Boston winter afternoon to reflect on what I’ve learned through the process. 

1. Everyone is dealing with something

It sounds so obvious and yet, as David Foster Wallace reminds us in his famous Kenyon graduation speech “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about”. Someone cuts me off in traffic, bumps into me on the street or is rude to me at work and the nearly audible thought in my head is “What’s wrong with that person?”. No, not in the genuine sense of “what pain are they feeling in this moment that encouraged this behavior” but rather more often in a flippant, annoyed, “why can’t they just be more thoughtful, goddamnit!” kind of way. And the Intagram culture of today only encourages this superficial view of others. We can’t help but obsessively click on the Instagram app to see nearly everyone we know living a perfect life, having the perfect lunch (picture shot from above, of course), with their perfect partner, posted with the perfect, clever caption.

And yet, time and time again as I sit around a dinner table full of friends and strangers alike, I am humbled by just how much everyone is going through. The recent heartbreak, the sick parent, the disappointment in one self, or the unexplainable sadness. Someone might present as an uber-successful, perpetually happy valued member of society but sit around a dinner table for 5 hours and you’ll see the cracks….. ironically, the very same cracks that let the light in. 

2. Sharing pain is the first step to eradicate the associated suffering

The first few moments of the dinner are always awkward. We cover the rules of the dinner (see #5 below) and explain that the conversation is not ours as hosts, but rather owned by everyone at the table. Therefore, Igor and I won’t be starting the conversation, or guiding it to any pre-determined destination. There’s a heaviness around the table – everyone wants to share and yet, no one wants to be the first to share. Typically, one dinner guest starts with something light and then a few minutes in, someone opens up. People share feelings and stories that they’ve never verbalized, certainly not to a room full of strangers, and oftentimes not even to themselves. And while they may be sharing something heavy, you can start to see a lightness wash over them as well.

There’s a Buddhist saying that any time we experience misfortune; two arrows fly our way. The first arrow is what actually happened, which can cause pain. The second arrow is the suffering and pierces our skin if we try to pretend that the first arrow missed us. We often live our lives burying the pain we’ve experienced but in the burying process, we let the second arrow hit us and stay with us for years.

The last hour of the dinner is some of the “lightest” moments of my life. Over the course of 4 hours or so of sharing our respective pain, insecurities, and anxieties we’ve started to remove that second arrow. The table is often filled with laughter, and love.

3. Arguably the greatest gift we can give someone is to listen, and listen in silence

One of the rules we have at our dinners is that only one person is allowed to talk at any given moment; we have one cohesive conversation and no one shares the stage. When someone speaks, everyone else is silent and listens intently -- it’s a distinct kind of listening; There are often moments of silence after someone finishes sharing because it’s not the type of listening whereby you’re waiting for someone to finish just so we can respond but rather, a true listening. Our dinners guests are heard.

It’s unfortunately a unique experience in today’s age of obsessive re-tweeting, commenting on Facebook posts, and reacting to said comments on Facebook posts. I’m not blaming technology for this phenomenon; largely I believe that technology is just a mirror of our culture and we live in a responsive culture, full of interruptions. But through hosting these dinners, I’ve learned that the greatest gift we can give others is to create space for them.

As Rachel Naomi Remen reminds us:

“Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us. Not the silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence…. Silence is God’s lap”  

4. Our culture of perfection creates a deep sense of loneliness

In 2016, the most popular NYT article was Alain de Botton’s piece entitled “Why you will marry the wrong person?”. As he postulates in his interview with Krista Tippet, the reason that this rose to the top of the list is because we feel deeply lonely around our difficulties. In a culture that is oppressive in its value of perfection, we’re all desperately looking to find solace in areas that we have personally gotten very, very wrong.

Whereas other dinner parties are often filled with conversation about what people do professionally (often in a subtly competitive manner) or where someone just traveled, we spend more of our dinner sharing failures than successes; professional failures, failures of relationship and often the hardest to face, failures of our own character. It’s these shared stories, stories of failure and of pain that create the the real connections in the room. At the last dinner, one of the guest came over to me as I was washing dishes and exclaimed with excitement and gratitude that though we spent 5 hours together, “I have no idea what any dinner guest does professionally and this is exactly what I needed”.

5. Rules are important

As someone who generally doesn’t like to impose his views on others, this was a tough one for me to buy in to initially but as we learned from Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, “every gathering contains the opportunity to create a temporary alternative world for those who enter it. And one of the ways to do that is to think like a game designer and create temporary rules.” We realized that if we want people to engage in unconventional ways, we have to create unconventional rules of engagement.

At Our Inner Lives, we have 5 dinner rules.

• We follow the Chatham House Rules: "When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."
• We aim to create a psychologically safe environment, meaning no one will be judged or made feel that they are judged for any opinions they share even if we aren't all in agreement.
• We do believe in questioning and challenging one another and yet, if someone says "I don't want to talk about this further", we respect that wish entirely.
• We encourage you to share how you feel, but understand that feelings can be difficult to address.
• In line with the rules of "Jeffersonian Dinners", when we are sitting at the table, we will be having one conversation; we don't intend for smaller groups to break off in side conversation.

They’ve served us well thus far and I’d encourage you to create rules for the next gathering you have. It might make some guests (including yourself) uncomfortable but it also holds the potential for you to go somewhere you’ve never been before. 

6. Many of us live in our heads more than our hearts

Our sixth and unofficial rule is that we encourage guest to share from their lived experience as opposed to their theoretical understanding of a concept i.e don’t share what Erich Fromm thinks about love, talk about the last time you felt like your heart was ripped out of your chest. To date, we’ve explored the concepts of courage, moral dilemmas, love, existential loneliness, deep kindness, and forgiveness, among others. While these are all deeply personal, there is also a canon of philosophical texts on these topics and often times, dinner guests skew towards the philosophical rather than sharing the personal.

Sharing a conceptual explanation instead of facing one’s own experiences might be a defense mechanism but our educational system is also in part responsible; we spend 20 years in school learning history, science and math, and very little time exploring our emotional landscape. And yet, as we’ve learned from Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett’s book How Emotions Are Made, “Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world.” If our emotions are our constructions, it only makes sense to give them a seat at the table.

And as Barrett continue to explain, exploring our emotions can we incredibly beneficial for our interpersonal relationship as she advises us that when in conflict:

“Instead think, “We have a disagreement,” and engage your curiosity to learn your friend’s perspective. Being curious about your friend’s experience is more important than being right.”

7. There’s something magical about a dinner table

Whether it’s an evolutionary adaptation, or a cultural construct, eating dinner with a group of people is one of the most beautiful experiences. We’ve included a How to Host Your Own link on our site and encourage you to host more dinners, whether or not they are Our Inner Lives themed. 

8. In darkness, there is light

It’s ironic – we generally spend so much time trying to avoid negative experiences, hurt or pain in our lives and yet the deepest, most thoughtful, and kindest individuals are often the ones who have been dealt the tough hand. Throughout the dinners, we’ve heard some pretty heavy stories, stories that completely changed the course of someone’s life, the type of stories that you can’t help but thinking “I’m glad that didn’t happen to me” but often times, throughout the story, you can start to see how this experience, painful as it was, was also deeply valuable; it built their character, developed their empathy and made them stronger.

In ‘A Hidden Wholeness,’ Parker Palmer describes the ways in which a heart can be broken: the first as shattered and scattered; the second is the heart broken open into new capacity, holding more of our own and the world’s suffering and joy, despair and hope. More and more, I’ve come to believe that when the darkness comes, we get to decide whether it breaks us or breaks us open.

The Japanese practice of Kintsugi, or gold splicing, is the perfect metaphor for this way of approaching challenges. Instead of discarding cracked vessels or trying to cover up the cracks, Japanese artists repair broken items with a golden adhesive that actually enhances the crack lines, making each piece unique. They highlight the lines made by time and rough use which emphasizes the beauty and utility of imperfections. It turns damage into beauty and darkness into light.

9. And the best light is candlelight 

Call it “Hygge” if you’re Danish, or “Gezzelig” if you’re Dutch, but our dinners are illuminated by candles alone, and I can confidently say we should all spend more time in candlelight.