While living in our Munger apartment at Stanford, Katherine and I started hosting our “life stories” dinner series. This is a type of Jeffersonian dinner that Katherine and I are known for amongst friends.
At Stanford, we would prepare a Raclette meal complete with boiled Yukon Gold potatoes, Swiss Raclette Cheese, Paprika, Telicherry Pepper, Cornichons, Pickled Pearl Onions, Mixed Salad, and Swiss Alpine Herbal Tea. The total size of the dinner would consist of 4-5 people (myself and Katherine included) and typically last a total of 1 hour per person (the record though for a single person is over 4 hours).
The premise of the meal is simple and wonderful. Everyone takes a turn going around the table and tells their life story in extreme detail, typically starting with a brief life story of their ancestors (this could just be parents or could stretch back many generations) before telling their own story to the present day. Others are allowed to interject and ask questions during the flow of the story or afterward.
The first time we hosted life stories, we did it with some of our closest friends who we had known for years and yet we learned SO MUCH about the rollercoaster of pain, suffering, joy, and a million other emotions our friends and their ancestors had faced in getting to this present moment.
We had stopped doing life stories during COVID and started hosting life stories dinners again in our apartment in NYC a few months ago. This was an incredible reminder of how powerful and moving these stories can be. Even more incredible is that every time someone tells their life story, it changes. We have heard one of our friends tell his life story four times. We learned something new every time.
Life stories only works if everyone around the table trusts everyone else and feels willing to be completely vulnerable and transparent (I have no doubt that we have heard stories that few other living souls have). Life stories definitely does not and should not scale. Most people will never know the vast majority of my life story which is as it should be.
I think it would be pretty cool if more people did life stories. If one person who reads this starts doing life stories, I think that would be pretty awesome for them and their friends.