Way back on April 18, 2020 I blogged about the early days of the pandemic. Despite the uncertainty then, something good came about: our family started hosting a weekly dinner with our next door neighbor.
We still do weekly dinners, and now we have another neighbor who joins us. Both ladies are octogenarians with decades of history to share. It isn’t a one-sided arrangement. When we part at the end of the evening, if rainbows could appear, they would. Every week is the emotional boost we need to reaffirm our humanity. Just like the plant exchange, it’s a win-win all around.
I truly wish there were quantitative measures of what we need most in life, things like empathy and caring. Instead, we often spend our lives chasing the dollars that we then need to buy what we think will make us happy. Or worse, we slave away to earn money to spend on therapy to explain why we are not happy.
Once upon a time, I took one of those Briggs-Myers tests. It said I was an ENTJ. According to 16personalities.com, an “(ENTJ) is someone with the Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging personality traits. They are decisive people who love momentum and accomplishment. They gather information to construct their creative visions but rarely hesitate for long before acting on them.”
Recently, I took the test again and it registered me as an ENFJ, where the Thinking characteristic was replaced by the Feeling characteristic. According to 16personalities.com, “ENFJ are warm, forthright types that love helping others, and they tend to have strong ideas and values. They back their perspective with the creative energy to achieve their goals.”
The creators of the Briggs-Myers test suggested early on that the characteristics we register are more innate than learned. It could be true. Truthfully, as much as I want to fit the altruistic description of an ENFJ, I’m really not as much a Feeling person as I am a Thinking person that has deeply pondered the wider effects of not being more connected to the world in a cooperative fashion.
In any case, please enjoy these photos, a small collection of the different dishes we’ve had the opportunity to sample: the edible art we’ve enjoyed over the years. I also hope to continue to share with you the energy and power of social connection, and perhaps some recipes here and there too.