Dinner Tables Were Round

Dinner tables used to be round, like the sun and moon. There are no country flags billowing on these circles because they belong to all of us. This doesn’t mean that politicians are not scheming behind closed doors to cut them up into blue, red, green, black, and purple flags, to form the United Nations of the Sun and the United Nations of the Moon. 

There is no equality in tables because most of them are rectangular: the dinner table at home and the boardroom table in the office.

There is something called the head of the table, which equates to the head of the family.  The Chief Executive sits at the head of the table, and the Assistant Chief Executive cannot wait for him to break his leg while skiing in Colorado, so that he can run the company for a few weeks, sitting on that chair. Who sits where in meetings is just as stressful as who has the corner office and the one next to the photocopying machine.

The rectangular table is also injurious to your neck because you can strain it as you try to look at the Chairman who is up there at the head of the table. 

The sun and the moon as representatives of equality still exists in many parts of the world, where you see families eating from one plate, a round dinner plate. They are not poor, as tourists think. 

It teaches kids that life is about sharing, sharing the resources of the local river because there is only one river, sharing the resources of the forest, the air we breathe and the Arctic.  I don’t live in the Arctic, you say.  Why should I care about that?

Go figure.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger