In America, a man will promise you lunch, and you are both meant to understand that he means nothing by it. I understand this now. It has been explained to me, kindly, more than once. I have decided to ignore the explanation. I like my way better. We had talked perhaps ten minutes outside a hardware store. The weather. His truck. As he left, he shook my hand and said, "Hey, we should grab lunch sometime." In my country, you do not offer a meal you do not intend to serve. So I heard it as what it plainly was. A gift. "I am free Thursday," I said. "Ha, for sure, for sure," he said, and got into his truck, and drove off, glowing, the way a man glows after a good deed. So I kept Thursday open. I wore the good kimono. I took a table by the window. I laid out two settings, and I ordered tea, and I waited with a full and happy heart. He did not come. And here is what I want you to understand, because it took me some time to see it. He had already given me the gift. The gift was not the lunch. The gift was the promise. For one warm moment, a near-stranger looked at me and imagined a future where we were friends. He built that small bright world out loud, handed it to me, and drove off lighter for having made it. That he never came is no theft. You cannot steal a thing you have already given. So I no longer wait at the window expecting a face. I simply keep the Thursdays. All of them. I am, at present, holding lunch for eleven men. Eleven futures, promised to me by good people who meant it for exactly as long as it took to say. I treasure every one. My calendar is the richest in this country. And last week, leaving that same hardware store, I shook a man's hand, and I heard my own mouth say it, proudly. "We should grab lunch sometime." I meant it completely. I will keep that Thursday too. If he comes, we feast. If he does not, I will sit by the window in my good kimono, in a country generous enough to promise more meals than it could ever serve, and I will raise my tea to all eleven of them. So tell me, America. The next time you promise a stranger a lunch you both know will never happen, would it trouble you to know that somewhere, a samurai wrote it down, and kept the day open, and was glad?