With whom would you have dinner?...

Recently at my new job, our boss asked those at a meeting with whom would they have dinner. Not having much time, my mind raced for names as my turn approached. Names of people both living and dead were flying through my mind. And then the answer hit me: I would love to have a chance to have dinner with both President Abraham Lincoln and Leonardo Da Vinci. As soon as their names left my lips, the reasoning poured from me.

I would love to speak with Lincoln and ask him how he kept going when almost everyone thought the South had won the US Civil War. I want to know how he handled things when the chips were down. He even had to replace his general leading the North during the war. With the Civil War going so badly, his own supporters were asking him how he got the country in such a mess. Everyone was questioning and criticizing him. People were crying in the streets that they didn't want to go off to fight someone else's war, but he stood firm and knew what he was doing was the right thing to do. Even though he bowed a bit to the political winds in first only granting the Emancipation Proclamation to the states south of the Mason Dixon line, he did this in order to maintain the fragile North. I want to know from where he got the fortitude to keep moving ahead when all looked lost during the worst of Civil War for the Union.


And then I would turn to Da Vinci. I would want to hear him laugh about the best selling book and movie that were inspired by his painting of The Last Supper. We could talk about his many drawings and groundbreaking works of art and theories. I would ask him how he came to conceptualize a tank, helicopter, calculator, and concentrated solar power centuries before they were even a part of man's imagination of the future.

After hearing them both speak, I would just sit back and let Lincoln and Da Vinci talk together. Imagine the conversation between those two great minds. Of course, I would be taking notes as they discussed everything under the sun.

So with whom would you have dinner?