"If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would it be?"

History has an extremely small proportion of great men and women who are remembered for their deeds and ideas. Far more numerous are the multitudes who pass away into insignificance.

The past is rife with individuals who, though we don't remember them, or even know who they are, chose to give up their lives. Sometimes this is meant literally, and sometimes this is figurative, in the sense that they gave up pursuing their own desires during their lifetimes. In many cases, they sacrificed in the hopes that the generations that came after them might have a better life than they did, even when recognition or glory weren't an option.

I would ask to have dinner with one of these men or women, who lived and died in total obscurity. To spend an hour or two learning who they were and what mattered to them seems meager repayment.