We should do this more often

Every good dinner ends the same way.

Coats on. Someone's in the doorway. And somebody says it.

"We should do this more often."

Everyone agrees. Everyone means it. I've said it a hundred times and I meant it every single time.

Then nothing happens for eight months.

The sentence

Here's what's strange about that sentence.

It has a 100% sincerity rate and a near-zero execution rate.

It's not a lie. Nobody's being polite. Look around the table at that moment, everyone genuinely wants more of this.

It's a wish. And a wish without a mechanism is just a nice way to say goodbye.

Nobody is against it

I thought about why. Because it's not obvious.

Nobody is against seeing their friends. There's no camp opposed to good dinners. The demand is there, the supply is there.

The problem is scheduling. Gathering loses every calendar battle it enters.

Work has deadlines. Kids have practices. The contractor can only come Thursday. All of that gets a date.

Friendship gets "sometime."

And sometime isn't a date. Sometime is where plans go to die politely.

The math nobody does

I did the count. Some of my closest friends, I was seeing twice a year. It felt normal.

Then I multiplied.

Twice a year for the next twenty years is forty more dinners. With people I'd call family.

Forty.

I ran it again with my parents. Once was enough.

I don't accept numbers like that in any other part of my life. I renegotiate numbers like that.

The unromantic fix

So we did the least romantic thing possible.

We put it in the calendar. Recurring.

Same table, roughly the same people, once a month. Not for birthdays. Not for occasions. For nothing. The date is the occasion.

No theme. No menu ambitions. Whoever can make it, makes it.

I know how that sounds. Scheduling your friendships like meetings. Where's the spontaneity?

I'll tell you where the spontaneity was. It was saying "we should do this more often" in a doorway and seeing each other the following spring.

Spontaneity was never coming. The calendar invite always does.

Defaults beat decisions

Here's what changed once it was standing.

Nobody has to decide anything. Deciding is what killed it before. Someone has to text first, propose a date, chase four replies, restart when two people fold. That's a project. Nobody wants another project.

A standing dinner needs 0 deciding. It arrives on its own. You just don't cancel it.

The dinners aren't special. That's the point. Some are loud. Some are six people and one pot of pasta. Those ones are usually my favourites. Nobody remembers the menu anyway.

But the sentence in the doorway changed.

"We should do this more often."

Now somebody answers: "We do. It's on the seventh."

SP.