In my line of work, hospitality is something that is often discussed and considered. We endeavor to define it, to create space for it, to find the ideal manners of expressing it. It is in the name, after all: Food & Beverage Hospitality. But do we often consider the act of hospitality as something that exists outside of this realm? Something that exists as a guide by which to live one’s life?
When I was 16, I left my home to live as a stranger in Belgium for 1 year. My language skills were pretty abysmal and I had never even been on a plane before, let alone outside of the country. Everything was new, strange, and exciting. I had to learn from scratch, like a babe in the wild. But I did learn. Not on my own, mind you, but with countless hours of patience and help from my host families. This was when email was just getting started, cell phones were still just phones, and we mostly relied on landlines for conversation. My first host mom, Catherine, had a 50 lb English-French dictionary that she kept in the dining room so that we always had quick access when we would inevitably stumble over a word or concept through the course of conversation. She worked, had a family, cooked, cleaned, did endless mountains of ironing, and somehow always found time and energy to sit with me and talk as I struggled through the language, trying to find my way.
On my recent visit where I saw her again for the first time in 22 years, I told her how grateful I was to her for that, and how in awe I was that she even did it in the first place! I mean, who invites a stranger into their home and immediately treats them like family?! It was incredible that I had one host family who did that for me, let alone 3!
This concept of hospitality, it’s not just a concept. It’s a life philosophy. It’s a declaration of generosity and its expression through the actions of my host families and friends that I met there changed my life forever.
Do you ever have those moments when you feel like you’re looking at your life from outside of it? Seeing it with a stranger’s eyes? I get these fleeting glimpses of this experience, seen now through the eyes of a 40 year old woman and how extraordinary it was. How rare and special it was to live like someone else for a time, to smell the air and wear the clothes of a person in a completely different world and realize how quickly it became normal. How I could live this duality of outsider and local simultaneously. Be accepted and rejected based purely on my nationality, language skills, appearance. How I actually found other people, from all parts of the world, who were just like me and simultaneously found people from the same part of the world who were completely different.
These acts of hospitality are powerful. They change the world because they create an opportunity for people to change their perspective and connect.
In a world increasingly divided, where people refuse to communicate with each other, where judgements about people are made based purely on political affiliations or religious beliefs, the practice of hospitality is needed today more than ever before in recent history. Small acts of kindness have the power to snowball and they really do change the world.
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