Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day, but there’s nothing like a good, long lunch for learning new things and getting to know your future best friends
I love lunch. It’s the one meal of the day that doesn’t bookend a round of sleep. It’s totally okay if you skip washing the dishes afterwards, because they’ll be sorted after the next meal time, rather than hanging around in dishwater.
I don’t take lunch that often or, rather, I don’t take lunch away from my desk too often. This is why I like to take lunch with people I don’t know.
A few years ago, I met a bubbly, fabulous person on the rooftop of a venue where we were both attending a swanky do. She really made me laugh, and I felt like I’d found a kindred spirit in her. Hit the fast forward button a little, and she invited me out for lunch.
A few years and a thousand meet-ups since and, we now work together on a few projects. Bonus: she’s become a good friend.
Run forward a little to the time where I was finally going to meet a man who I’d grown to know online, and it just so happened he’d be in my city for a day or two. Serendipitously, he was staying in a hotel around the corner from my home, so I popped right past him as I tackled my morning jog.
It was a meeting of friends that solidified so much of what I already knew – he would grow to become an infinite force in my life. Yes, I’m talking about you, Dave Luis.
Hit that back button again to about a year ago, and you’ll find I’ve just begun profiling local businesses for a weekly publication. It was an intense process that required interviewing, spending time with and getting to know people who weren’t necessarily part of my immediate or related circle of contacts and friends.
It was enlightening, to say the least and it led to me growing my Rolodex of contacts. I also, incidentally, ate a lot of lunch with people.
Nowadays, I try to do lunch once every two months with someone I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll hear about them via my network, or happen upon their name in passing. It’s pretty easy to ask someone out to lunch. Just pop them an email, introduce yourself and go with it. The worst that’ll happen is that they’ll say no.
It’s because of this approach that I ended up, just last Friday, in a beautiful office, surrounded by people I’ve never met, learning so much about the intricate henna-design art of Mehndi, and about a team who use their individual talents to create things in a communal way.
As I sat there, laughing with people I did not know, who do things I do not do, I realised I was learning, over lunch.
Whether or not there’s a specific purpose to it, I’m no longer afraid to do lunch with someone I don’t know anymore. As it turns out, those are the very best mealtimes for my brain.
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