how connection developsWho could you happily sit with at the end of a meal, even after the conversation goes quiet?
When novelist Gary Shteyngart tells Dan Harris about a three-hour dinner in Paris, he pauses over how to introduce the people at the table (31:45). One was a good friend. He had met the other man that evening, though by the time he told the story he called him a friend, too. After the meal, the three sat together in silence. Shteyngart remembers how much he liked being there. They had eaten well, heard interesting things from one another, and reached a point where he felt quite content to sit with them a little longer.
Harris and Shteyngart are talking on 10% Happier about Shteyngart’s essay collection The Sensualist. Early in the interview, Harris admits he still checks his step count. So does Shteyngart (3:33). What delights him about the number is realizing how much of Manhattan he has seen on foot. His affection for the Italian custom of a stroll after a meal has much the same quality (8:01). There are cafés along the way and people to greet. A familiar face is reason enough to stop. Harris recognizes a version of that choice in his own evenings. Sometimes he knows exactly what an earlier bedtime would give him and still wants to stay out with his friends (33:41).
A watch gave them something to talk about
For Shteyngart, some of his first friendships with other men began with a mechanical watch. He tells Harris that he was on a stalled train, feeling increasingly panicked, when he began to follow the smooth sweep of the seconds hand on his wrist (42:43). His fascination with how the watch worked grew. He wrote about it and joined groups of watch enthusiasts in New York. Most of his close friends had been women. Here he found himself among men who could talk at length about the workings of a watch.
He liked the way those friendships began. The men could get to know each other over a subject they already cared about. Talk about watches led to eating and drinking together, and eventually one of those men was someone Shteyngart knew he could call. When COVID vaccine appointments were hard to find, he rang a friend from the group (44:19). His friend gave him a time, ten the next morning, and a place, Harlem Hospital. He told him to bring the whole family.
A piece of cheese for every page
Long before he began to collect watches, Shteyngart had another enthusiasm he shared with someone he loved. His grandmother in Leningrad encouraged him to write a novel and paid him a piece of cheese for every page (25:25). He loved the cheese. He also discovered that he could make himself laugh as he wrote. Later, as an immigrant kid having a hard time at school in the United States, he wrote a satire that made his classmates laugh, too (27:02). Even now, he welcomes the reader who stops him on a Manhattan street to tell him a book made them laugh at a time when they needed it. That reader can tell him something a sales figure never could.
Three generations at one table
Harris calls the feeling they keep coming back to “enoughness” (28:39). For Shteyngart, it can include the people whose company is more complicated. He describes making his own decisions while continuing to love parents whose politics and expectations differ from his (38:07). He gets particular pleasure from watching his son and his father play at boxing, something he had little inclination to do with his dad when he was a boy (40:08). He steps back and lets the two enjoy each other. Then there is the meal he remembers sharing with his parents and his son, with chilled red wine and Georgian soup dumplings (41:04). Shteyngart takes his time explaining exactly how to eat one. You pierce the dumpling, sip the broth, add a little pepper. Sitting there with the people who raised him and the child he is raising, he has everything he wants from that dinner.
Sources
Dan Harris and Gary Shteyngart. Optimizing Your Life Has Never Made Anyone Happy | Gary Shteyngart. 10% Happier, November 13, 2026.
Gary Shteyngart. The Sensualist. Penguin Random House.