The Person and the Experience

Last night I hosted another dinner party (pics), and I think a good time was had by all. But it has me thinking about the reason why I host parties sometimes versus why I spend time with friends 1-on-1…and the difference between enjoying a person versus enjoying an experience.

Jared part 1: I prefer to get together with people 1-on-1, and most of my plans are coordinated as such.
Jared part 2: I love making my friends happy (i.e., entertaining, sending a random present or a card, etc).

Now don’t get me wrong, part 1 & part 2 don’t have to conflict because I don’t mind being around a bunch of people, especially when they’re all my friends. But I think part 1 stems from enjoying the person–who my friend is, what they believe in, the history of our friendship, etc. And part 2 as relates to entertaining a group is twofold. On the one hand, I get the benefit of seeing a lot of people enjoying themselves. On the other, most of the good time is because of the group experience and less about the individual people. There’s nothing wrong with an experience, but while the sum of the whole may be greater than its parts, it becomes a very different being in the process.

Now let me confuse the issue a little–my generalizations above are not always the case. Sometimes when you’re with one person, it’s about both the person and the experience. And sometimes it’s about just one. Seeing a movie is a perfect example. In some cases, you’re seeing a movie as an excuse to be around a particular person; the movie doesn’t matter, the experience may not be an end in itself, but being with so-and-so is. In other cases, you’re with a friend at the movies just because you wanted some company and didn’t want to go alone; the individual was less important but their presence added to the experience. I think the same two situations can be said for meals–sometimes you have specific company, sometimes you just have company. And in the best of cases, it’s about both. Similarly, in a group, sometimes it’s who you have around (and what they mean to you) that makes for a good time and other times it’s the group that makes for the experience.

This confuses me, too: it’s impossible to really separate a person’s meaning to you and your experience with them at a given time. It’s just that some situations lend themselves more to one than the other.

My dinner party wasn’t a large group–11 people. Even though pretty much no one had met before (outside of knowing me), the conversation rarely had a lull. But what I didn’t do was to introduce everyone’s background or work or relation to me–something I did at the last dinner party. Everyone figured out pretty quickly that Chris was a doctor (after explanations of the stages of malaria), that Kim was saving the world (through her explanations of child trafficking and African stints), and that Ted knew altogether too many random facts…but all the details didn’t come out like before. The party never became about the individuals–it stayed flowing as its own being, separate from any one individual. There’s nothing wrong with that, and heck I already knew a lot about each of the people. But it made me think about what I enjoy, how I want to entertain, and why I tend to choose solos most of the time.