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having a purpose to your gathering need
not make your gathering formal I think
what I am really talking about is when
you want to have a more meaningful
gathering with your friends or or any
type of group there are ways to increase
the level of meaning and that's by
increasing the level of focus and so
I'll give an example I was speaking with
a woman who is a journalist and she was
assigned by Real Simple magazine to do a
piece on how to art of gather a PHY her
dinner party so she called me up and I
think she thought I was gonna say like
put your fish knives this way and put
the wine glass here and Georgian wine is
all the rage and I said well what is a
need in your life right now that by
bringing a specific group of people you
might address and she said for a dinner
party I said just work with me here and
she said a nice and she said well I'm a
worn-out mom the other day I was at a
friend's house she cut me a peanut
butter and jelly sandwich into triangles
she fed me and I burst into tears and I
said why did you burst into tears and
she said because I realized that how
worn out I am and how beautiful it was
to feel taken care of in that moment and
she said what if I hosted a dinner party
for my other worn out moms yes that's
great give it a name all right make it
seeable the worn-out moms hootenanny
give it a rule if you talk about your
kids you have to take a shot and she
started getting excited and I could hear
her on the phone like oh so what do i do
do I send a paperless coat or a post or
an evite and I said just put in an email
put warnout mom hootenanny in the
subject line tell the peanut butter and
jelly sorry sandwich
give them context to your life invite
the other worn out moms in your life and
she did this in all six women RSVP'd yes
within the first 45 minutes she's like
I've never had response rates like this
and they they did take out they did not
cook right it was embodied all the way
through when they walked in she thought
about the opening ritual and she didn't
call it that but when each woman walked
in she
like thought up this idea she had them
rummage through their purse and take out
anything child related and put in a
basket so like he's like discussing old
gummy bear you know packs happy packs
and and it was this joyous hilarious
beautiful soul feeling night and it's
just taking your real life and not
pretending it's not your life it's
actually saying this is my life right
this is not a be formal and don't open
the kimono so part of this this
gathering is not so much saying become
tight and closed and like no no no no
it's saying like what is what is the
need right now around which I'm willing
to show you my need and invite you in to
basically create something new together
to mark to witness to remember to invent
rather than saying let's come together
be in the living room and blow out
birthday candles you can still have a
cake right but it's more starting with
the need not with the format I think of
every gathering as a social contract
which basically means it is an agreement
between that promise of as a host of
what it is you're gonna provide both
materially and psychologically and as an
actual opportunity to say yes yes I am
willing to receive that as a guest yes I
am willing to take that risk of the
guests and many of us whether it's you
live in London or live in New York like
me or in many cities around the world
they're getting more and more
multicultural so we all have different
ways of gathering right and a huge part
of I think the reason why whether you
are introverted or extroverted or
whether you are honoring forward or
honoring recessive or whatever you want
to call it we are vague in our
invitations and so we don't actually
represent what it is we want to do in an
evening six or seven years ago my
husband and I got married in India and
I'm half Indian and he's Indian American
and we went back for the first time to
India to meet our families or extended
families but we knew that the context of
our family culture was that if we just
got everyone together for dinner the
cousins would talk to the cousins uncles
would talk to the uncles both sides what
kind of keeps of themselves after the
formalities and we really wanted to have
a differ
kind of night we did it in like a
neutral area it wasn't on either
person's a house and invited everybody
and said we're gonna do a different kind
of night it's called 15 toasts get ready
to share a story and so everyone knew
that they were coming for and they
behaved in part because of each other
right the other family will kept them on
their best behavior and at the beginning
of the night we'd done our glass and we
said tell us a story a story or an
experience from your life that no one
around the table has ever heard and how
it affected your lens on the world and
for three hours and two hour their
credit they were game and they stoled
stories and we heard stories like my
grandmother who is now 92 and rarely
speaks she spoke in Hindi I did it
through translation who was one of the
first women to go to Banaras University
Banaras Hindu University and how she
went in a covered up carriage with the
blanket and her father said that he/she
should go and apply but he was going to
go out of town to be at a cousin's
wedding and purposely wasn't gonna be in
town when all the families complained so
he could pretend that he didn't know and
then he said so nani how did that change
your view and she said i understood how
change happens and we said why she said
well for me I understood that change
can't happen without at least some of
the powerful consenting to it so part of
this and and all everyone was willing to
do it because we set them up to
understand that this is what this thing
was I think a lot of the pushback and a
lot of the terror comes when you spring
things on people or when the purpose is
illegitimate right like why are we doing
this this doesn't make any sense
think about how you prime your guests
think about naming your invitations in
ways that you know even in a work
meeting is it a brainstorming it's a
laboratory it is a workshop right and if
you make your title your name of your
gathering do your work for you or you're
actually then bringing people in so
you're priming them in a way where they
already know what they're gonna be
talking about and we tend to under hosts
because we think the gathering begins
when people walk in the door but the
gathering begins at the moment of
discovery and you're hosting people all
the way through to the moment they walk
in and if you do that well there's much
less to facilitate in the room because
people already are kind of on board for
what it is you want to be doing
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