Some lunches behave properly.
They begin at the correct time.
Proceed through a reasonable number of courses.
And end while everyone can still remember what they planned to do afterwards.
Others have absolutely no respect for the clock.
They begin with one glass.
Then somebody orders another bottle because leaving half a conversation unfinished would be terribly inefficient.
The plates disappear.
The sunlight moves across the table.
Someone says, “We should probably go,” and nobody makes the slightest attempt to move.
These are usually the best lunches.
Not because of the restaurant.
Not because of what was ordered.
And certainly not because everyone behaved sensibly.
They are memorable because, for a few hours, nobody is trying to reach the next thing.
The conversation is not being squeezed between two appointments.
The laughter is not interrupted by someone repeatedly checking the time.
Nobody is mentally standing up before the body has left the chair.
The afternoon is allowed to become whatever it wants.
Perhaps that is one of the most underrated luxuries now:
being somewhere without preparing to be somewhere else.
We are very good at dividing life into efficient sections.
Work.
Training.
Messages.
Appointments.
Dinner.
Sleep.
Repeat.
Even pleasure is given a suitable position in the schedule and expected to finish punctually.
But the moments we remember rarely cooperate so beautifully.
They expand.
They interrupt the plan.
They turn a quick lunch into an afternoon, an afternoon into an evening and one glass of wine into a story that improves slightly every time it is repeated.
Nothing extraordinary has to happen.
Sometimes the entire event is simply the right people sitting around the same table long enough to stop performing the edited version of themselves.
The conversation becomes less careful.
The laughter becomes louder.
Someone tells the story they were definitely not going to tell.
Another person orders dessert despite having announced, with great conviction, that they could not possibly eat another thing.
This is not poor time management.
It is excellent use of an afternoon.
Of course, not every lunch deserves six hours of your life.
Some barely deserve the breadbasket. 😂
But when the company is right, the atmosphere is easy and nobody is looking for an excuse to leave, the clock becomes irrelevant.
Let the glasses remain on the table.
Let the conversation take the unnecessary detour.
Let dinner become a problem for later.
The best moments are not always the ones we arrange perfectly.
Sometimes they are the ones that quietly take over the day.
And frankly, any lunch good enough to make everyone forget the time has earned the right to become dinner.
Silvia
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