Updated January 2020

If you're over 50, you'd barely remember that time in our lives when it still happened. If you're under 40, you might never have dropped by anyone's place or been dropped on by anyone in your whole life. It's practically disappeared from our culture, probably forever. 

In the United States, we now have more people living single than not. Part of learning how to be happy living alone is learning how to be alone.

Adapting isn’t an obstacle until you get to the point that you stop initiating social engagement at all. Before you know it, you’ve created a little too much rich solitude.

Conversation is a skill. It requires practice. Use it or lose it. Maybe we should answer the door.

We know friendships are important, but almost universally, we struggle with making them. The older we get, the more we struggle. Discouraging people to drop by see you, or knowing not to drop in on someone you would like to visit certainly doesn’t help. This story by VOX goes into meaningful detail about how housing choices in the United States, and how our discouragement of spontaneous encounters negatively affects us as a tribe.

In contrast to when I’m at home in the US, where the framework for interaction is meticulously planned out, if I call a Mexican friend, it’s not unusual for them to say, “What are you doing later today?” They don’t keep quite the control over the flow of their day (that’s also probably why being late to social engagements is still largely accepted.)

At home, even if the friend and I are both free at that moment, it’s unlikely we’ll make a spur of the moment date. Instead, we make plans to get together in a week or two, out of habit. By the time that date arrives, it’s lost steam and almost taken on the tone of a burden - a commitment. Days have past since one or the other felt that longing. We lost the sense of urgency we had when we initially called. We’ve moved on.

I've mentioned in many whiny blogs that we treat friendships in the US like work, fitting our friends in between errands, and grousing over what we are going to do together rather than realizing that the time being together, not what we do, is the main event. By the time we reach 40, we haven't simply hung-out with our friends in years.

This custom of dropping by and hanging out as still practiced in Mexico reminds me of what life is all about: putting down the project or delaying the errand for a person you like, maybe even love. In Mexico I realized that I have the right to interrupt my to-do list and say, "This is what matters." 

In light of the new statistic on how many people today live alone now and how many more will in the future, maybe we should all should think about reinstating the custom of dropping-by.

With a nod to Bill Maher's funny show segment "New Rule," the new rule of socializing should be that if a person wants to see you and you value the relationship, you answer the door - bleary-eyed, hung-over, or smelling like bacon if that’s all you’ve got at the moment.

My days of my time being too important (or smelling too badly) to spend a few minutes with a friend who’s stopped by are over. In Mexico, as I stand there sweating and apologizing for wearing my boyfriend’s old gym shorts (and uncorking the wine), they’re quick to remind me that I am in my own home... and to them I'm beautiful. 

 Next up:

A talk with a local about Puebla, Mexico, its Spanish influences, its cuisine and its legends.

About the author:

I'm Kerry Baker and author of two books. My second book "If Only I Had a Place," is a guide to renting in Mexico for potential expats, giving yo a system to rent luxuriously year after years.

Most recently, I released “The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life though part-time life in Mexico.” This how-to book is perhaps the first of its kind: And instruction manual that entertains. In 2021 I co-authored The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for expats, snowbirds and traveling trying to eat healthy in Mexico.