The View from a Drawbridge

A friend and I have this little game we like to play. If you could invite 10 people, living or dead, to your house for a dinner party, who would you choose? This is an interesting thought experiment. It makes you think about the questions you’d like to ask. It makes you examine closely the issues and people that you find interesting, and most of all, it makes you see just how many amazing people there are/have been in the world.

So, for tonight, my guest list includes Peter O’Toole, Malala Yousafzai, Bill Clinton, Mary Magdalene, Nelson Mandela, Jessica Jackley, Ben Franklin, Maya Angelou, Mahatma Gandhi, and Eva Cassidy.

I must confess that Peter O’Toole has always appeared on my guest list. Not only has he met a lot of amazing people and done a lot of amazing things, but he was a brilliant raconteur, so he could tell you all about it in delightful ways. I have no doubt that I could listen to him for hours. I wouldn’t really have any specific questions for him. I’d just enjoy hearing anything he wanted to say.

Malala Yousafzai is a new guest, but I have no doubt she’ll be invited to my dinner parties for years to come. Just 16 years old, this girl has already been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Inexplicably, she did not win. She is an advocate for the education of women, not just in her native Pakistan, but worldwide. At age 14, she was shot in the head for her trouble, but that hasn’t even slowed her down. I would love to ask her what it is like to be so clear in your convictions at such a young age, and also what it is like to be thrust headlong onto the international stage when you started off just a humble young lady who simply wanted to go to school.

I’d love to have a chat with Bill Clinton, because I miss his presidency greatly. I would like to ask him about the one thing in it that disappointed me, though. No, not the whole Monica debacle. As far as I’m concerned, his inability to keep it in his pocket is strictly between him and his wife, since Monica wasn’t a minor. No. What I’d like to talk to him about is Rwanda. Why, why, WHY, Bill, did you look the other way and let all those people get slaughtered? I’ll never understand that.

Mary Magdalene was an outspoken female community leader at a time when that wasn’t as uncommon as you might think, but she is one of the few whose name has filtered down to us. Sadly over the years her reputation has been warped to seem as though she was a prostitute, but historians have found that not to be the case. It is probably a function of not wanting women to have powerful roles in Christianity. I would love to hear her thoughts on the subject. I’d love to know the truth about who she was, what she believed, and what she witnessed.

I can think of a million things I’d like to ask Nelson Mandela, but the primary one is how on earth he could emerge from 28 years of imprisonment and not only avoid bitterness and anger but also become someone who is known for reconciling his people.

I wrote about Jessica Jackley a few days ago. She is one of the founders of Kiva.org, a microloan organization that now benefits small businesses throughout the world to the tune of over 150 million dollars a year. I’d love to hear more about how she came up with her vision and brought it to life to such a degree that it has changed the world. She’s amazing.

Ben Franklin is my hero. I find him amazing. Not only is he an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist, but he’s a fascinating politician and historical figure. He’s also quite the ladies man, and his one fatal flaw, I think, is that he treated his family abominably. I’d love to examine that contradiction further.

Maya Angelou is, among many other things, the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings which is a wonderful book. She is an amazing and inspirational writer. In her life, she’s been everything from a prostitute to a foreign correspondent to an actor, and she recited a poem at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. I’d have to put her at the opposite end of the table from Peter O’Toole, because they’d be able to match each other, story for story, I’m sure.

Mahatma Gandhi, I think, is one of the most determined individuals who has ever lived. I would love to talk to him about how he managed not to give up on his goals despite all the obstacles that were thrust in his path, as it’s something I struggle with daily. I can not think of a way to tactfully discuss his fatal flaw with him: the fact that he refused Western medicine for his wife, resulting in her death, and yet he accepted that same medicine for himself, resulting in his recovery, but it’s something I’d dearly love to know more about.

And last but not least, I would invite the incredible singer Eva Cassidy. I wrote about her recently as well. She died at age 33, her wonderful talent cut short. This is truly a tragedy. I’d love to know what her hopes and dreams and plans would have been had she been able to live to be 100. I can’t even imagine the beauty that she could have given the world. I definitely wouldn’t be able to sit her next to Ben Franklin, though, because his saucy comments to this gorgeous woman would probably disrupt the flow of the entire event.

I think this party would stretch on to the wee hours of the night, and it would be a most fascinating experience indeed.

Who would you invite to your dinner party?