Several years ago, Chia and I ran a six month business development program for a group of contract managers scattered throughout the north island of New Zealand. Running service contracts for steel mills, telecommunications providers, property developers and local councils, these managers were practical no-nonsense people.
We gathered in Wellington, the home base of the multinational company for whom they worked. Scoping projects and setting up the parameters for the program, took up most of the first day, which was spent in the office. The following day we had a arranged a secret location.
Participants gathered early on day two, not knowing where they were going or what they would be doing. The bus arrived at 7.30 am. They were given journals and asked to record what they saw and what they felt as we made our way out of Wellington past the now trendy seaside villages nestled into the ridge that encircles the city. Our destination was a working sheep farm called Pencarrow Lodge, perched on a hill overlooking the Tasman Sea at the southern most tip of the north island.
The bracing air, open verandas, log fire, spectacular vistas, and intermittent sounds of sheep and dogs, induced a slow and intimate mood among participants. It was a magical day and although we had to return to Wellington to sleep, watching the sun set from the wide veranda before settling down to a candlelit dinner around a long refectory table, was like spending an intimate evening with old friends.
Something surprising happened then, something that Chia and I could never have manufactured. I spontaneously lifted my glass of wine and started toasting. Words like: ‘I toast my mother’s mother’s mother for having the good sense to grow up a country girl and pass on her practical skills to her daughter’s daughter’s daughter,’ seemed to flow from my lips.
I then told them the story of my visit to Odessa in Ukraine several years ago.
My travel partner and I were official guests of the Gorky Scientific Library. Our official dinners and lunches were lubricated with an endless supply of Odessan champagne and Russian vodka. And at every event there were rounds of toasting, which became more hyperbolic as the night wore on.
The group soaked up the spirit and poetry of toasting like good Odessan champagne. From that moment on, throughout this first
dinner and every subsequent one we shared as a group, someone would pause, lift their glass and make another outrageous or sometimes poignant toast like: “I toast my grandmother for teaching me to make scones as a young boy and appreciate the company of strong women – making me an ideal catch for any woman who wants me!” or “I toast all INTJs who have given the world strategic planning and without whom it would whither on the vine like grapes in a drought.”
Stories can linger in and suffuse our consciousness like catchy melodies. Toasting became a motif that ran throughout the six months of the program and was a constant source of validation and fun. So taken were they by the toasting story from then on they called themselves ‘The Toasters’.