Dead People You’d Most Like to Meet — Pick Five

I know from meeting celebrities that they’re often different from what I expect — so that even if I know their work well, they themselves are surprising, and I come away with extra insight into who they are. This insight I later see in their public manner, as something previously hiding in plain sight. Though famous and accomplished people are experts at getting you to like them, and at presenting who they’d like to be, I believe it’s still possible, if you are attentive and willing to face the truth, to get something from actually meeting a person that’s not possible to get from the distance of a screen.

That said, if we were to go back and meet dead people, why meet John Lennon, when you have a pretty good idea of what he looked and sounded like, when you could meet Mozart, or Abraham Lincoln?

With that in mind, who are five dead people — NOT COUNTING YOUR OWN RELATIVES — that you would most like to meet? The circumstances are up to you. Maybe you want to meet Jesus and miraculously speak Aramaic. Maybe you can’t speak Aramaic and have to study before you take the trip. In any case, I think we should agree that the circumstances of each meeting is ideal, in the sense that you’d get to hang out, and outside time — at least in the sense that your visit won’t affect the course of history. Otherwise, you may be going back in time to tell Kennedy to leave on the bubble top.

On my own list, I’d pick Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln. Probably Samuel Johnson. Then I’d like to hold a couple in reserve. I probably wouldn’t want to meet Jesus, because that could just screw me up. I think I’d like to go to Rome and walk around the forum before it was in ruins . . . I’d have to give this some thought.

Anyway, what do you think?

http://blog.sfgate.com/mlasalle/2013/06/04/dead-people-youd-most-like-to-meet-pick-five/