Thursday, August 20, 2015

From the Worst to the Best in 6 Days

Last week I went out on the worst date. I agreed to dinner, which is unusal for me, but I was trying to be optimistic that it was worth the time investment to give someone a change.  As I arrived, I realized he downed a glass of wine before I got there. When we sat down, he wanted to order a bottle of wine. I suggested going glass by glass because I was only going to have one and he said "I challenge you to finish a bottle of wine" and I said "I have to drive" and he said "so do I". After a big to-do to pick a bottle of wine (me saying 'whatever you pick will be fine'), he ordered a vegan dinner and polished off the entire bottle sans my one glass.  Tipsy at the end, he asked if I wanted to hang out again. I went home with the resolve that being alone for the next 10 years would be better than repeating this dinner ever again/

Fast forward six days and I'm at a work meeting with the CEO of a company we just acquired came to sit next to me after lunch. As he walked over, I panicked, wondering what work-talk I was going to coherently make, after just having a meal and having a food-hangover.  Luckily, he wasn't looking to talk shop and we quickly entered the realm of TV after I blurted out 'So did you start referencing the Heisenberg Theory before or after 'Breaking Bad' got big?' Much to my amusement, he went straight to the topic of Breaking Bad and from there asked 'have you seen Weeds?' - have I seen Weeds? Nancy Botwin is one of my personal heros (in all of her hot mess-ed-ness).

From there we took a short leap to travel and then to Africa. He's been!  He fell in love with the people and the culture when he visited. I was gushing about Rwanda. The love, the heart break, the difficulty being here and strong pull to be back there. At that point, he referenced a Buddhist principle which I immediately recognized at Pema Chondron - Pema - he reads Pema!  Wow! 

Unfortunately our talk was cut short because the larger group meeting resumed.  He said we should talk more and asked what office I was in.  Long story short, we had a work email exchange and against probably all reason, logic and good advice, I found a somewhat low key way to drop in my number.

For the amount of time I've put in complaining about the lack of quality dates and connection - I decided that when a good conversation comes along, you have to at least make an effort toward it.

I have no idea if he was as amused (even excited) as I was. Maybe he meets people like this every day.  But I don't feel that sense of connection so easily and I was eagerly hoping for the conversation to continue.

I'm sure that the conversation happened for a reason - maybe it wasn't go get to know him, maybe just to remind me of that the depth that I'm holding out for really does exist.  It was worth going out on a little limb to see!