Find Your Six: A Potluck Picnic for People Who Want to Practice Having People

You probably already know plenty of people. But do you have people?

• People you can ask. • People who can ask you. • People who know a little about what's actually happening in your life. • People who can help you think through something difficult. • People who might occasionally carry a small piece of the load. • People you can disagree with, repair with, laugh with—and see again next week.

We're gathering for an hour at noon Sept 12 in Parc Jeanne Mance (at the corner of Avenue de l'Esplanade and Rue Rachel) for a relaxed potluck picnic with a slightly unusual purpose:

Come meet some people you might want to practice interdependence with.

This picnic is part of Practice Having People, a new six-week Montreal social experiment.

Participants will form small peer-led groups of six—The Six—and spend six weeks practicing the skills that turn connection into dependable mutual support: asking, receiving, offering, problem-solving, boundaries, disagreement, repair, reliability, and coming back.

Groups start the week of September 14.

This won't be a networking mixer. You don't need an elevator pitch. You won't be speed-dating for best friends. And we're not asking strangers to manufacture instant vulnerability.

Instead, we'll use a few simple, playful conversation prompts and small-group activities to help people get beyond: “So… what do you do?” and toward questions like:

• What are you carrying these days? • What are you unusually good at helping other people with? • What kind of help is hardest for you to ask for? • What makes someone feel dependable to you? • What would you love to have more people to do with?

You'll move around, meet different people, eat together, and get a feel for who you might enjoy seeing regularly for the next six weeks.

Bring: • something simple to share • something to sit on • your own plate/cup/utensils if possible • curiosity • absolutely no requirement to impress anyone

We'll provide the structure. You provide the humans.

Why six? Six is small enough to become known and large enough to contain different perspectives, capacities, and resources. We're interested in what happens when six people deliberately practice becoming more reliable resources for one another. Not forever. Not as a promise of instant friendship. Just as an experiment:

What might change if you had five more people in your life you were actually learning how to rely on?

Come meet some possibilities.

Find Your Six. From “it's all on me” to “I have people.”