Toast, Happy Birthday and Spirit.

Not everything that happens in an organisation, a company, is just business. Well in sales it is almost the beginning and the end of every activity, but going to the more subtle, celebrating some birthdays together with friends, colleagues, directors and even some customers, results in networks of conversations that otherwise would be almost impossible to have.

I was invited to celebrate the 60th birthday of a company director. Nothing ostentatious, a simple cocktail party in a company room and about 50 people. An emotional and personal speech also brought us closer to the human part of ourselves and once we had celebrated the good wishes and sung the well-known happy birthday song, we mixed, chatted and from the usual people we knew appeared new faces and conversations to get to know each other and to establish and sustain, more often without a specific purpose, our network of contacts and friends.

All sailing in the same boat, I thought. I stopped for a moment to look back and see what the pandemic time had taken from us. Being able to share day-to-day experiences with others, to coordinate some activities, to laugh together and to celebrate face-to-face that more analogue than digital joy that was missing. It was missing, or at least it was something I certainly missed. Maybe it's because I'm a communication-oriented person. However it was, and even if no one talks about it, it's a necessity, the need to meet and share, which, in the light of this brief encounter, I consider essential.

I am grateful to have been invited, no doubt, but more importantly I would like to thank everyone for having shared, for a moment, the things that really nourish our spirits. Because, although we often don't realize it, it is he who accompanies us in everything we undertake and in our work.

Cheers, joy and happy birthday.