Designed Sustainability

I never thought about the importance of home-cooked meals until recently, when a friend turned to me and said, "It's because of your cooking that we eat like a family."

I couldn't have imagined that the two brothers at the table would feel this way about lasagna. I mean, it's nothing fancy, right? But it's not the food itself that's so important.

What matters is that there's something bringing people together where they talk and laugh and share, where they feel comfortable being themselves, where they are truly a family — whether of friends or relatives, that doesn't matter. What matters is having a safe place to go, with people who care about you.

Isn't that what we're all looking for, on some level or another?

When I was a little kid, my parents made it a priority to have dinner as a family. We'd tell each other about our respective days, maybe share some silly stories about people we know. We always knew that, no matter how long or arduous our days were, we could always count on each other and our family dinners.

As I've grown older and learned about the various childhood experiences of my friends, I've come to see how lucky I am. There was a certain magic there, around the dinner table, that gave me the curiosity to learn and the strength to put those lessons to work.

It's vital, I think, for kids to grow up with this kind of support and sense of community. Maybe then, we'd have a global society that is a little happier, that feels a little safer, that grows a little stronger with every shared meal.