Life Should Be Like

After college, a group of us moved to Baltimore. The first few months after our May graduation were hectic, as we flew to and back from summers in Europe, found apartments, landed “real” jobs, and generally settled into life as we didn’t yet know it. On a Monday night in October, we gathered at Little Havana to celebrate a birthday. It was an unusually warm evening. We sat outside on picnic benches, on a patio that faced the water and the Domino Sugar sign. We ordered half-price sandwiches and pitchers of beer. At the end of the night, someone said something like, “Hey, this was nice. We should do this again.”

So we did. We had dinner every Monday night for almost two years. Our core group was five people, but most weeks we could expect to be joined by one to six other variable participants – friends of friends, significant others, siblings, or old classmates visiting from elsewhere. Whenever it was warm enough, we sat outside. We talked in quarter-life language: our newborn careers, the inevitable letdown after college, whether and how we should buy houses, get serious, get crazy, quit our jobs, move, or stay here. How long to stay. Where to go after that. What to choose in life, generally.

I think we were all glad to be there. But still, slowly and amicably, the group disbanded. We lost people to far away places, graduate school, demanding jobs, and time-consuming preoccupations. We had talked through our plans together, our wildest dreams and schemes together, and eventually nothing seemed more important than making it all happen - especially not burgers and beer. Each of us had an internal battle to win and a hundred versions of life to try, and check off, or cross out. We had to sacrifice something.

I read recently that Monday dinners are becoming some kind of social trend. This strikes me as very, very good news. Anybody can do dinner on a Saturday. Monday night dinner means you have friends who really love you, who don’t mind your angsty Monday whining. This is what I want my life to be like. When all the choices have been made (we’ll be eighty then) and the careers launched into the stratosphere (seriously), I want someone to call someone else and say, “Hey, let’s go out on Monday. Somewhere with a view. Bring your people.” We'll gather the old crowd - or the new crowd, or just a crowd - to clink glassware and send congratulations all around the table. And at the end of the night, someone will say, “This was nice. Let’s do it again.”