You know how it is when people invite you to parties? Not the people you normally hang out with, the other people. Like office colleagues for instance or the kind of people who are nice to you and whom you are nice to but have not entertained in a contained space, your home or theirs. The kind of parties that make you feel a bit awkward. Like "Hmm, I might have fun at the party or may find that I have nothing to say, I guess I should go..." - those sorta' feelings.
Anyway, last week, we went to one of those parties after fighting some initial reluctance. There were a mix of people of all age groups, some we know well, some not so much.
And we had a blast!
The newness of the interactions there had something to do with it, I think. Since these were people we would not meet so often in a social setting, we ventured to topics we normally did not discuss at get-togethers. Also, coming from different age groups, they all had something new and interesting to contribute to the conversation - recipes for sweet potato soup, early morning risers and how they manage to wake up just before the alarm, arangetrams and dances, karate and small Indian men as easy opponents, skiing and doctors, medical school costs and bad direction sense and of course food - it was a potluck after all!
So anyway, it was a lot of fun and I would have missed it all for fear of being awkward! No wonder all these bond-together articles in magazines have a bulleted point, "Explore new activities with partner to enrich blah...blah".
And to that I would add, "...even if it makes you feel awkward initially. Don't underestimate the importance of being awkward."
Of course, it doesn't always apply to all new experiences, the other day, I went to a yoga class where I was kind of a mis-fit, there were all these older, well-built (big?) women and a few of them gave me distinctly unpleasant stares, not the "How could you walk in 6.8 minutes late, little girl?" kind of look but the "There is something I really don't like about you, so I am going to stare and make it awkward for you" kind of glare. As the instructor went, "relaaaaaaaax", I tried to ignore unpleasant-stare-glare without much success and ended up not experiencing perfect yoga-calm for the first fifteen minutes of class. Plus I had to use the rest room and I was scared the woman would tsk-tsk if I cut through the class to the rest room!
Those kind of awkward situations are just that...awkward. Not sure if I picked up anything important from all that awkwardness :p
