As far as risks go, taking a year to try to accumulate 365 interesting dinner invitations and blog about them is hardly noteworthy.   Nor is it daunting to the people on these pages to share a meal with a stranger and take a chance on such a simple idea.  People with far less than many of us possess find ways to share what little they have without perceiving it as a risk.  So I wonder what we truly risk when we withhold the contributions we long to make.   And I wonder why it is so much less shocking to keep doing what makes us unhappy than it is to contemplate change.

If there is a risk that those on these pages take, it is that of exposure.   A close friend went so far as to warn me that I would have to ask the hard questions.  After grappling with what he meant and what the implications would be, I realized that the people I was interested in speaking with were already asking themselves their own hard questions.  In fact, this candour seems a part of what pushes them to share their lives as courageously as they do.

The risktakers that will be profiled on this site often see themselves as anything but.  For all they have overcome, they see the greater risk is to sit back or turn off or to shut up.   If there is one commonality among those who invite me for dinner, it is the complete refusal to be less than they are.  The extraordinary people profiled in these blogs live life like it is imperative to answer for their choices and engage fully in what interests them.  The only risk they don’t take is that of mediocrity!