I bumped into my friend Ben at a coffee shop recently. He's an exciting and excitable guy and he runs one of the great clothing shops here in Maine with his wife. He knows people everywhere he goes, and much of what I admire about Ben is the way he revels in community. He finds it, he makes it, and he tends it.
You'll often hear him make some remark like "The older I get, the less I care about work. I just want to hang out with my friends. I never regret hanging out with my friends."
The morning we met, he was in fine form with just this kind of coffee shop decree.
"Don't text me, just come over."
"If my car's in the driveway, just stop in. I may not cook you dinner. I may only have 20 minutes to chat, but I'll happily give you those 20 minutes."
"Come over in the morning, and let's see what the day will bring."
"Don't text me, just come over," has stuck with me, and strikes me as an undersung way to gather and one worth reintegrating.
As kids, the drop-in was at least as common as making a plan. Ride your bike over to your friend's house, see if he could play. If so, great. If not, next time.
What the drop-in hinges on is a permanent state of welcome, a privileging of the social over the solitary, toggling your default setting to community instead of privacy.
Opening your home up to the drop-in cuts through the ceremony of hosting and being hosted. If every moment could bring a new friend to the doorstep, then hosting would be less an activity for the gracious, than a simple way of being. If you don't need an invitation, then you're always welcome. It's a simple idea that can feel, as busy adults managing jobs and kids and errands, radical.
As the one doing the dropping-in, you're trusting that you're welcome, and you must accept that your visit may last the length of a cup of tea and include helping unpack groceries or watching six-year-olds improvise a play. You may not get your host's full focus this time. That's fine. You'll be back.
I realized, as Ben lauded the drop-in, he was pointing not just to the standing grace of receiving and being received, but to a yearning for lost spontaneity. Dropping in may mean getting swept up in some domestic adventure or lead to a spur-of-the-moment zip to the lake for a swim.
The next time his car's in the driveway, I'll drop in. And, now, the same goes for mine.
