Absolutely Recommend! This was a great book. It was a feel good read and I needed it. It is 200 pages, but the book is small. So, it is also a quick read.
An older man, Edward, and a reporter, Isabel the author, form a friendship and meet for dinner over the course of many years. This happens after the older man’s wife dies. Sometimes we all need something to live for. And it seems that Edward’s relationship with his wife was the main driver in his life. We all get a bit lost when we loose someone we love. And it takes a bit of time to regain our sense of balance and momentum.
“…romantic love is a practical exchange, a transactional agreement, and that attraction almost never lasts.”
Edward seems to be a bit of a romantic. But when I read this quote, I was reassured that he was a realist as well. You all know my take on romantic love: It is a chemical reaction in your brain that only lasts 6 months. Romantic love as we are sold it, in modern society, is a lie. If romantic love were real, the divorce rate would not be so high. All relationships are transactional. We don’t partake in relationships unless we are going to get something out of them. Or at least we shouldn’t. Every interaction(action) is a transaction(action), an exchange of energy. There is nothing selfish about this, it is just a fact of life and science.
“There is somewhere someone who will feel lucky knowing you. And if lucky enough, loving you.”
We all tend to live in a world without enough love. Love is lacking in modern society. Or maybe it always has been? Ken Kesey in the book Sometimes A Great Notion said, “Love or the fear of not having it, or the worry about not having enough of it, or the terror of losing it, certainly does conquer all.”
In the world my family and the war games has created some of us never have known love. Well, most of us have never known love. And this makes it hard to love ourselves. Because we have no example to go by. Creating a relationship with ourselves is more important than creating relationships with others. If you do not have a solid relationship with yourself you cannot have a solid relationship with others. You cannot build on a shaky foundation, right?
Isabel and Edward create a relationship with each other in, Dinner With Edward. But that relationship they create with each other reminds them that having a solid relationship with themselves is the foundation on which life is built. Though Edward is wise, as most older people who have lived are, he does not just give Isabel the answers to her problems. He is just there for her as she works her way through the journey of her own life.
We all need friends like this! Sometimes we just need someone to be there for us. And rarely do we actually need someone to give us the answers to our problems. Most the time we just need someone to listen as we talk our way through the problems of life to find our own answers. Life is not a one size fits all journey. It is a custom design.