On birthdays, celebration, and connecting through food and friendship

Hello there.

It’s only mid-February but there’s been a lot of celebration so far — between family birthdays, milestones of social entrepreneur friends, Chinese New Year, and yep, my own birthday too, even if it wasn’t usually like that for me. See, birthdays weren’t usually a big deal for me growing up, but I saw it differently last year, and intentionally tried to do something different this year.

This post finds me reflecting on the “marking of time” through ritual celebrations or gatherings, and what “hosting” a birthday party might look like when you let people host and co-create with you. The two sections in this post include (1) Hain: My birthday potluck, and (2) Andito pa! My friends’ enterprise birthdays. I also end the post with invitations to upcoming gatherings on February 22 at UP Diliman and February 27 online.

Too often, many of us choose not to host meals because of the logistics involved in gathering people — from coordinating schedules, cleaning one’s home, planning the meal, etc. etc.

This year, I didn’t want the tedium of logistics to stop me from actually just creating a time and space to gather a few friends. And so, I asked for the help of friends to make it happen with me on February 7, the Saturday before my 41st birthday (as a very belated 40th birthday celebration). 😆

I invited them to a potluck of food and creativity in our family home — to help me with meal prep, food and even programming — as true friends happily would. Things were not perfect or streamlined or on time, but the absence of such rigidity made everything just right and as it should be. 😸

A potluck carries with it the spirit of collective care and co-creation.

It is a big deal to be relieved of the sole burden of organizing, but more than that, potlucks also allow people to bring more of themselves into a gathering — to contribute and take part in nourishing others, but hopefully in a way that is both joyful and easeful for everyone.

According to Wikipedia:

The first known use of the term is from the late 16th century, likely from the words “pot” and “luck”. (Gasp! No way!) In its original meaning, 'potluck' referred to pots on communal fires, and the notion that one had to try their luck with the unknown quality of their contents. […] Over the course of the 19th and early 20th century, church potlucks evolved in American immigrant communities. By the 1930s, scenes such as those described in the 1840s of Norwegian farmer's wives bringing together multitudes of dishes "to share and to pass" were antiquated, and the potluck often served as a fundraising mechanism for ethnic minorities catering to audiences of different ethnicities.^[9] During this interwar period, potlucks were a common means churches and other community organizations raised funds.^[10] As the World War II began and rationing set in, potlucks provided a way for households to entertain without needing to provide for every guest.

Wow. Who would have thought that potlucks had their origins in church. HAHA. But also, in this, I see that potlucks are feminist in that:

1. They offer a different picture of women — we don’t have to be that perfect hostess that’s got everything ironed out. It can be a little messy and uncoordinated, and that’s OK.

2. It gives us permission to seek help from our community.

3. It is democratic in that it allows people to partake and shape a gathering with the host, and not for the host to have sole control or power in the proceedings.

4. It is inclusive and celebrates diversity — there’s no strict policing of contributions, and you’re welcome to bring your unique and authentic self here.

So, with my celebration being a potluck of food and creativity, I invited guests to bring any of the following:

1. Some food or drink that says something about you

2. Something you made (even non-food)

3. Hosting a game or facilitating a short experience for the group to enjoy!

All I asked is that it either be fun or meaningful (or both) for guests to prepare and share.

The day began with salad co-making in our kitchen, where I prepared three different types of salad, and some friends had come in early to help prep. Other friends came in for lunch bearing their own offerings. My closest friends from our my Expressive Arts course with TAHI also prepared to host a little game, fulfilling my requests to make something fun for everyone, aging-related and celebrates the friendship I shared with those present. It also included some roasting, which was actually my favorite bit! Maybe because friends roasted kindly. 😆

I also used this opportunity to share my big hairy audacious goal of coming out with a food-themed deck for Ugnayan. It’s something I’d been saying for probably two years now, but have felt quite stuck. I figure I just need to get out of my head and talk to people about it more and give them a chance to help me out.

I successfully tested out some questions, drew some questions from them, and ran it in a way that allowed the introverts to contribute by writing on slips of paper and just getting a few volunteers to share their responses. After a few shares, we passed around baskets for people to drop in their responses — hain offertory-style, with my friend Sara being a co-host too when she queued Bukas Palad on her phone for those moments, and Jeopardy for when I gave my prompts. 🤣

My prompts included:

1. To help us remember / not forget the past: What’s a favorite meal-memory you have with me?

2. To help me cook for you next time: What’s your favorite food smell / secret ingredient — one thing that makes almost anything delicious to you?

3. To help me with my big hairy audacious goal: What are questions around food that you’re curious to ask others too?

4. To be earnest and/or cheesy: What’s an ingredient or dish that you see as a metaphor of our friendship?

5. To keep our connection in the future: What’s something you want to “cook” or make with me in the future? (can be non-food)

…and I was pleased with myself, because this activity:

• Allowed people to share stories of friendship (which did involve me, but it was more about an us)

• Gave everyone the chance to contribute responses without forcing anyone to share publicly

• Gave people a chance to introduce themselves to the group without networking-y intros

• Gave me something tangible to go back to — because people offered slips of paper (I then read them later that night / the day after and continued to feel the love and joy of the gathering)

There’s more that I could share, but all those elements contributed to the potluck-ness of the gathering, and it was pretty great to me. 😊 Try these prompts out at your next dinner party?

I hope to make this a yearly ritual — less about my birthday, and moving forward, more of an excuse to gather a multiverse of friends for a potluck before the real start of the year (i.e. Chinese New Year) — so we don’t have to contend with the hectic-ness of December, and we can allow ourselves an intentionally slow and connected start to the year.

My home girl and gathering guru Priya Parker talks about this concept of “generous exclusion” when planning a gathering.1

Generous exclusion is the intentional drawing of a temporary line for the good of the guests and to help activate and fulfill a gathering's purpose.

I know I said that a potluck is inclusive (in that it allows people to bring themselves as they are), but at the same time, I had to keep my invite list to a manageable number — celebrating as many meaningful friendships as I could, while also keeping it within a number I could comfortably hold together.

Since I can’t even remember the last time I held my own birthday party, it felt like it warranted a certain “big-ness”, but if I’m being true to myself, I wanted a gathering that was a multiverse of friends but one where I’d still have a chance to connect with each person .

So, I chose to invite ~20-ish of the connections that had become or remained meaningful to me in the past two years (people who I spent considerable time with or had one-on-one hangs with in this period) — and weighing how they would fare in a friendship-multiverse type of situation. Some people were unavailable on the date, and that helped bring down the group size by natural selection. The resulting number of guests (15-ish) was still a bit more than what allowed me to connect deeply with everyone in the time that we had together, but it just means I need to do smaller follow-up potlucks or one-on-ones!

And because I wasn’t able to invite all the people whose friendship I value even if I haven’t seen them lately, this celebration reminded me to host more small group gatherings to reconnect with those friends again! So that’s also part of a commitment I’m making this year. 🥗

A theme for this month has also been in celebrating my social good / impact “batchmates” and the birthdays of their social enterprises. When I started Muni in 2012, I’d already heard of the work of Good Food Community, and I’d also become witness to the launch of The Spark Project in early 2013.

This February, I got to be a part of their birthday celebrations! Good Food Community is now 15 years old, while The Spark Project is 13!

One might think that if a business lasted 10 years and is able to continue, they’ve probably overcome the hardest parts of setting up the business. In Good Food and Spark’s cases, they crossed that 10-year threshold during COVID, possibly when we were imagining either dire or hopeful futures — or maybe vacillating between both.

When Mabi and Char shared Good Food Community’s journey and evolution at the top of their birthday celebration on February 13, I couldn’t help but think of my own journey and evolution. I thought of the earlier days of @muni_ph, and who I was in 2012 — young, idealistic, a believer in the power of conscious consumption and social enterprises. Back then, I thought that if we made better decisions as consumers, things would be right in the world. I quickly learned that it wasn’t enough, and I am still in the process of learning what might be “enough”.

The answers still elude me, but I continue searching, in the same way that I’ve seen Good Food continue to search for what the future can hold for them and their adjacent communities.

So as part of their birthday proceedings, Good Food sought the community’s input on figuring out their next steps. We were guided through the day of sharing stories by Edwin and Anang, and were fed yummy food by Gulay Lang and the GFC suki Little Store, and in true, inclusive Good Food style, were a mix of Good Food subscribers, community partners, farmers and the urban poor.

The conversations ended too soon, there are more questions than answers, and there is nothing certain except that there are people willing to journey with them to figure it out. And sometimes, that is enough.

Some things changed, some things stayed the same. Upon seeing other “batchmates” at the Good Food gathering later that day, like Rina Papio of Soilmate Collective (formerly Green Space), we reminisced about the earlier days of our meeting, and she shared challenges in getting people to believe and buy into the change she was seeking to create. It seemed like 10 years wasn’t that long a time to figure things out after all. And even after that 10-year mark, I know that challenges still ensue for these enterprises who struggle more because making money is not the only goal. But as Rina shared her story, I’m glad she stuck out the challenges, the uncertainties, the lack of clear answers, long enough for her to find a rhythm she can dance to right now.

On February 16, just a few days after Good Food’s celebration, I found my way to celebrate Spark Project. The common theme between the two gatherings has been the importance of community in sustaining their work. Though Good Food and Spark’s gatherings each had their own flavor, they were both filled stories of gratitude to and from the community members they created an impact on.

When stories were being shared about Spark’s impact, I looked around the room for Patch, because as both a proud friend and empath, I was so moved and imagined what Patch must be feeling in that moment — hearing about the feeling of transformation felt inside and out by Jho, one of the fellows from a women entrepreneurs’ program they ran.

Later, they also hosted a diverse panel marking the different stages in Spark’s journey, and representing the different pillars that drive Spark’s work today: Legacy, Green Futures, Gender, Inclusion.

There were many nuggets gracefully eased out by Ceej Tantengco, but one of my favorites was Ann Enriquez-Poco’s perspective on Legacy.

Ann shared how some companies fold or wind up, but that doesn’t take away the impact they already created. The income and opportunities they helped create. The mindsets and perspectives they shifted in business. The lives they touched and transformed.

As a society, we tend to equate success with how long something lasts — a relationship, an enterprise, a winning streak. But I’ve always thought that the value of something is not in how long you keep it alive, but in what was created or transformed while it existed — even if I also sometimes forget this.

This is why celebration matters. It is an acknowledgment, remembering, honoring…of shared history, of challenges overcome, of love and care that persists. It is a collective memory-making. A collective marking of time. So we don’t forget.

Sabi nga ni Bad Bunny, Debi Tirar Mas Fotos.

So as I end this long ass post, I ask:

• What are you called to celebrate at this point in your life?

• Who are the people you want to celebrate with you?

• How else do you want to “mark time” and remember?

And if you’re also looking to gather in community and make new memories together, I’m offerting these free / solidarity-based gatherings below.

1. [FEB 22, 2-5PM @ UP Diliman, Quezon City]

   LATAG: A @hapagugnayan potluck of food and creativity with Mabi David of Good Food Community → Learn more and RSVP here.

2. [FEB 27, 9-10AM @ Online via Zoom]

   Cultivating Spaces for Connection and Creativity with Culture First Creative Wellbeing chapter & Ugnayan Cards — Get a chance to win a deck of Ugnayan Cards when you attend this session live! (It won’t be recorded.) → Learn more and RSVP here.

3. [MAR 14, 2-5PM @ Common Room Mess Studio, Atrium Makati]

   TAHI: A @hapagugnayan creative potluck with Hiwaga Hands → Learn more and RSVP here.

Kitakits?

Nagluluto ng ihahain,
Jen Horn | @pagbubuo

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