Four People to eat with

I was recently posed an interesting question that I had heard before, but did not really know how to answer: "If you could sit down and eat dinner with four people, who would they be and why?" I pondered this question for quite some time, because you can look at it in many different ways. These are the results I came up with.

I would eat dinner with my girlfriend, Muhammad Ali, Gandhi and Stalin.

I would choose my girlfriend because she continues to be a great motivation to me and I find her more interesting than I did the day I fell in love with her. She is a great friend to me as well, and I would be ashamed if she was not at my dinner with me.

Muhammad Ali is a motivation to me as well. I have read a couple of his biographies and find him to be an incredibly honest and forthright character, something I pride myself on. This is also part of the reason I would want Gandhi at the table as well. I do not hold Gandhi to the same esteem I hold Ali to, simply because Gandhi is full of contradictions throughout his life (read his autobiography), but he is an incredibly interesting character who would bring many different perspectives to the table.

I would choose Stalin for a much different reason, for I am obviously not motivated by any of his traits at all. I studied Stalin thoroughly this semester in my Soviet history course and found him to be perhaps the most intriguing historical figure that I have come across in my life. There is reason to believe, in my mind, that Stalin himself was not that bad of a person, and instead was simply a man hellbent on keeping his power. Perhaps that is my professor speaking more than me (he was by no means an enthusiast or sympathetic man towards Stalin), but I find him to simply be an incredibly interesting figure.



Say now, who would YOU choose to be at your dinner table?