The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters by Emily Esfahani Smith

Author:Emily Esfahani Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Self Help, Philosophy, Spirituality
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2017-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

“How often do you dream of her?” Sarah asked. “Is it, like, she comes to you and says, ‘It’s all going to be okay’?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve had dreams like that. But also more ordinary ones. Like once,” Christine said, “I dreamt that she was doing the dishes and I walked over to her and said, ‘Don’t worry about doing the dishes. I’ll take care of them.’ And that was it. Brief. But another time, I dreamt that I was sitting on a bench and she walked over and sat down next to me. She put her hand on my hand and said, ‘Everything is going to be okay.’ It was intense. I could feel her hand on my hand, physically.” Christine put one of her hands on the other.

“And then,” she continued, “I woke up and thought, ‘I’m never going to see my mother again.’ It just hits me every now and then. Like I’m walking down the street and something happens in my day and I think, ‘Oh, I should tell my mom about this.’ But then I remember I can’t. Because she’s dead.” Christine moved some of the food around on her plate with her fork. “She was just here. I could see her coming into the room. And now,” she said, shaking her head and looking down, “I won’t see her again.”

“I haven’t had a dream like that yet,” Sarah said, “about my dad.”

I was sitting at a small square dinner table in Sarah’s apartment in Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan. There were five of us at the table—Sarah and her boyfriend Raúl, Christine, another young woman named Sandy, and me. By the time Sarah and Christine spoke about dreaming and not dreaming of their dead parents, it was about 8 p.m. on a crisp Sunday night in October. Christine, Sandy, and I had arrived two and a half hours earlier, bringing wine, chips and guacamole, and an apple pie. Sarah had made moussaka, and once we arrived, Raúl stirred up some cocktails; his infused tequilas sat on a side table in mason jars. The lights were dim. In the background, soft instrumental indie music was playing. Every now and then, one of the two cats in the apartment darted across the floor.

Welcome to The Dinner Party, a national community of young adults who have experienced the unexpected death of a close loved one. In cities all across the United States, dinner partiers like Sarah, Christine, Sandy, and Raúl get together regularly to break bread and talk about how their loss has affected their lives. Though this was my first time meeting the other four, they had all been gathering for a few weeks for dinner parties at Sarah and Raúl’s. I haven’t experienced a loss like theirs, but I was invited to join them, to see how people can come together to forge meaning and grow through suffering.

We all carry emotional baggage of some kind—baggage that can bring with it fear, hurt, guilt, and insecurity. For

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